Native People

Archival Material

Donna M. Loring papers, 1956–2016, undated

Donna M. Loring is a member of the Penobscot Nation, who served as the Penobscot Tribal Representative in the Maine State Legislature from 1998-2003 and 2007-2008. The Donna M. Loring papers offer an in-depth perspective into the work of Maine’s tribal representatives, and to Donna Loring’s experience and work in the legislature, specifically. In addition to documenting her service in the legislature, the papers contain drafts of Loring’s autobiographical work In the Shadow of the Eagle: A Tribal Representative in Maine (2008). There are materials related to the history of Maine’s tribes, the Maine Indian Land Claims settlement, and Native arts and culture.

Lael Morgan papers, 1936-2017

Morgan started her journalistic career as a writer for the Malden Press in 1958. Later she became a photojournalist at the Juneau Alaska Empire in Alaska’s capitol city, and then covered crime and politics for the Fairbanks News Miner. The award of an Alicia Patterson fellowship and a Rockefeller Foundation grant in 1972 helped her to establish a national reputation reporting on Native Americans. From 1974 to 1987, she served as reporter and photographer for Alaska Northwest Publishing and was assigned to visit every Alaska village named in the Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement. The collection contains clippings, notes and photographs documenting Alaska’s Native people and the land claims settlement.

Marie Ahnighito Peary papers, 1862-1995

Marie Ahnighito Peary was born in 1893 in Greenland. Throughout her life, she wrote about Greenland and its people. She collected clippings, memos and correspondence in multiple scrapbooks where she documented her activities and her family’s legacy of exploration. In 1932, she returned to Greenland to direct the building of a monument to her father. The scrapbook and diary of this expedition document her interactions with many Inuit people during the voyage and the construction of the monument.