Archives

Starting May 19, we’ll be open by appointment only. You can schedule a research appointment between 9:00-4:30 on Monday-Friday.

In honor of Native American Heritage Month, we offer this selection of materials from our collections that illustrate Native American presence and power at UWM.

📸: Sandra Harris Tran tables for the Native American Student Movement (NASM) at UWM, circa 1980. The NASM has been a key vehicle for Native student organizing, support, and expression since the late 1960s. NASM is now known as the American Indian Student Association. Call Number: UWM Photographs Collection, UWM AC 6, Box 18.

📸: A Milwaukee Sentinel clipping pictures American Indian students organizing for a dedicated academic program outside Chapman Hall in 1971. Call Number: UWM University Communications & Media Relations Records, UWM AC 134, Box 2.

📸: The cover to a 1974 catalog shows the fruits of Native student organizing in the form of the UWM Native American Studies Program (now American Indian Studies). Call Number: UWM Office of the Chancellor Records, UWM AC 46, Box 54.

📸: The UWM Native American Studies Program announces the pilot of the Wisconsin Native American Languages Project (WNALP) in 1974. This announcement is from "Anishinaabe News: UW-Milwaukee American Indian News," a newsletter of the Native American Studies Program and NASM. Call Number: UWM Office of the Chancellor Records, UWM AC 46, Box 54.



📸: Margaret Richmond offers language instruction to a class of Native "youngsters" as a Menominee Language Resource Consultant for the WNALP in 1976. Call Number: UWM Photographs Collection, UWM AC 6, Box 18. The earlier Native American Studies Program WNALP announcement anticipates an appropriate caption: "We've a lot to learn from our elders!"

In cooperation with the Great Lakes Intertribal Council, UWM Archives stewards the Wisconsin Native American Languages Project Records, 1973-1976 (UWM Mss 20). With extensive instructional materials from the WNALP, the collection continues to serve as an important resource for the study and revitalization of Wisconsin's Native languages for citizens of Wisconsin's Ojibwe, Menominee, Oneida, Potawatomi, and Ho-Chunk nations.

UWM Archives is celebrating Latine Heritage Month with a new pop-up exhibit: “The Art of Organizing in Latinx Milwaukee.”

Featuring posters, photos, illustrations, and more, the exhibit highlights the range and dynamism of Latinx organizing in Milwaukee since the 1960s. Drawing especially on posters from the important local immigrant and workers’ rights organization Voces de la Frontera, the exhibit explores how Latinx organizers have developed a distinctive visual culture of protest as a key mode of expression for the movement’s politics and vision. A selection of historic film footage drawn from the WTMJ News Archive also dramatizes how the contemporary work of Voces organizers sits within a longer tradition of Latinx organizing.

Pictured here are three selections from the Voces de la Frontera Records (UWM Mss 356) featured in the exhibit, including poster prints by Favianna Rodriguez and John Fleissner, and a photograph captioned “Mother, Child, Labor Law.” We’ll continue to feature highlights from the exhibit as we move through the month.

Stop by the UWM Archives exhibit space to learn more, and be sure to check out related exhibits in UWM Libraries Special Collections and American Geographical Society Library, too!