Lectures
Presentation on Centering Relational Responsibility and Indigenous Community Authority
In November 2025, Amanda McLeod (Sagkeeng Anicinabe Nation) was an invited speaker at the Australian Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Material (AICCM) More Than Materials: Collaborative Approaches in Cultural Heritage Conservation conference, held at the State Library of Queensland in Brisbane. The event brought together more than 320 delegates from across the globe to explore how conservation practice is shaped by cultural relationships, ethical accountability, and community-centred care. For the first time in AICCM’s history, two of the three days were curated with First Nations leadership at the center of the program. This initiative was co-designed with Caroline Martin, a Senior Boonwurrung Custodian and Founder and Managing Director of Yalukit Marnang. Under her cultural leadership, the days centered on truth-telling, relational responsibility, and community authority in conservation practice, foregrounding cultural protocols, Indigenous worldviews, and critical reflection on colonial legacies.
McLeod’s presentation brought together the Hidden Stories initiative, including the Traditional Care Practices video series, with her ongoing research into the care and stewardship of wampum belts and other Indigenous belongings held in museum and library collections across Canada and the United States. She explored how material conservation cannot be separated from treaty relationships, kinship systems, community authority, and culturally grounded decision-making, and emphasized the responsibilities of institutions to participate in community-led frameworks for access, interpretation, and care. Her contribution aligned strongly with the conference's focus on decolonizing conservation, relational practice, ethical accountability, and shared authority, and generated active dialogue among heritage professionals about reconceptualizing institutional policies and daily practices to better support Indigenous governance and cultural protocols. Participation in the AICCM conference strengthened international connections among conservation and heritage colleagues and reinforced momentum toward community-centred stewardship models and ongoing global dialogue on relational care and cultural integrity.
Rare Book Libraries Conference, Yale University
In late June, Amanda McLeod (Sagkeeng Anicinabe Nation), Melissa Moreton (Hidden Stories, IAS, Princeton), and Grant Hurley (University of Toronto, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library) presented at the 2025 RBMS conference (Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the American Library Association). The panel, “Knowledge-Sharing and Community Collaboration: Centering the More-Than-Human Relation in Libraries and Archives,” took place at the Yale Center for British Art and was attended by librarians, rare book scholars, and collectors from across North America. The session included an overview of the Hidden Stories traditional care practices project (Moreton), traditional care of wampum belts (McLeod), and the Arcana project (Hurley), a recent initiative at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library that paired contemporary artists with librarians to produce a new artist’s book inspired by items in the library collection. Hurley discussed the collaborative process of producing an artist’s book with transdisciplinary artist Maria Hupfield (Wausauksing First Nation), Waabazii (Anishinabemowin: swan).
The panel focused on knowledge-sharing projects at American (Princeton University) and Canadian (University of Toronto) libraries, led by members of origin communities whose belongings reside in those spaces. While these projects differ in shape and scope, they are all guided by a collaborative methodology that centers on community priorities, an approach meant to bring forward stories from artists and knowledge-keepers. The panel discussion that followed the presentations highlighted the experiences, challenges, and realities of incorporating Indigenous knowledge and worldviews into the work that takes place within cultural and heritage institutions, and the importance of source communities collaborating and guiding Indigenous representation and care of Indigenous materials in both conservation and curatorial contexts. The aim of these discussions is to begin to build tangible connections linking institutions to the communities whose belongings they hold, finding new ways to care for manuscripts and book-adjacent objects in a way that benefits communities and their more-than-human relations while also providing a framework for institutional caretakers.
The visit to Yale University also included a day of conversations with a Indigenous students, faculty, staff including Sandra Sanchez (Indigenous Collections Curator, Beinecke Library) Tarren Andrews (Faculty, Ethnicity, Race & Migration), Royce Young Wolf (Native North American and Indigenous Collection Manager, Peabody; Assistant Curator of Native American Art, Yale University Art Gallery) — as well as Charmaine Wong (Pacific Collection Manager, Peabody Museum). McLeod gave a lecture on “Removing the Colonial Lens: Decolonizing from an Indigenous Perspective,” and co-led a roundtable discussion on “Best Practices for Cross-Collection Care.” McLeod and Moreton also visited the Yale University Center for Preservation and Conservation with Laura O’Brien Miller (Conservator for Lewis Walpole Library), Paula Zyats (Head, Rare Books and Manuscripts Conservation, Yale U.), and Navajo conservation intern, Kyler Brahmer, discussing the challenges that Indigenous conservation professionals face when entering the field of conservation and working within museums. This knowledge-sharing work highlighted the importance of connecting Indigenous knowledge-keepers with conservators, rare book librarians, and other care professionals to improve the care of belongings in institutions within Europe and across Turtle Island.
Presentation on Indigenous Books
Hidden Stories collaborators Ian McCallum (Munsee-Delaware Nation/ OISE, University of Toronto), Melissa Moreton and Suzanne Conklin Akbari gave a virtual presentation on “Beaverskin and Birchbark: Community-led Research on Indigenous Books from Turtle Island” to the Belgian-Dutch Bookbindings Society (Belgisch-Nederlands Boekbandengenootschap) and the Consortium for European Research Libraries (CERL) on 17 January, 2025.
Printed in Basel in 1645 and bound in blind-tooled leather, a copy of Buxtorf’s Hebrew Lexicon made its way to the Americas, where it was eventually owned by preacher David Brainerd (d. 1747) and used as a source for sermon-writing. Brainerd lived among the Lunaape (Lenape or Delaware) communities in what is today New Jersey. When his well-used book broke some time in the early 1740s, it was repaired, likely by Lunaape women, who covered it with a brain-tanned and painted beaverskin overcover which has stabilized it to the present day.
This presentation traces the careful and collaborative approach to the study of this book, which is both a settler colonial object as well as an Indigenous belonging. Now in the collection of Princeton University Libraries Special Collections, the book has been visited annually by Munsee Delaware (Lunaape) community members in an ongoing, shared process of learning about its history and its relationships to that community. These collaborations have also facilitated work in progress with Anishinaabe communities on a birchbark book, noted briefly. The lecture provides a methodological overview of the collaborative approach to research on Indigenous books from Turtle Island (North America) and offers insights into work that centers the object or belonging within a web of relations. Watch the lecture here.
Suzanne Conklin Akbari on Byzantine Purple, Purple Wampum, and Indigenous Belongings
Project co-PI Suzanne Conklin Akbari delivered a series of lectures discussing how to approach the study of the global Middle Ages on Indigenous lands in the Americas and with Indigenous belongings in European collections:
“The Optics of Land Acknowledgement: Lenape (Delaware) Belongings in German Collections.” Medieval Studies program and De/Coloniality Now initiative, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany. 21 June 2024.
“Byzantine Purple, Purple Wampum: Mediterranean Studies on Turtle Island.” Annual Riggsby Lecture on Medieval Mediterranean History and Culture. Marco Institute, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN. 30 November 2023.
“Byzantine Purple, Purple Wampum: The Global Middle Ages on Lunaapahkiing.” Medieval Colloquium, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL. 9 November 2023.
“The Optics of Land Acknowledgement in Berlin: Indigenous Belongings at the Humboldt Forum.” Weekly Colloquium, Center for Visual Culture, Bryn Mawr College. Bryn Mawr, PA. 4 October 2023.
Munsee Wampum
Ian McCallum (Munsee-Delaware Nation/OISE, University of Toronto), “Munsee-Delaware Wampum Belts,” Munsee Language & History Symposium, Princeton, NJ. 5 November 2023. https://youtu.be/0amLNwWWDwc?si=fijQrZl9AMgV0Sg4
Lunaape Books
Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Melissa Moreton (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton), “Lunaapeewak at Princeton and Lunaape Book History,” Munsee Language & History Symposium, Princeton, NJ. 5 November 2023. https://youtu.be/561XM8GgJkE?si=NRMjjyPqrmpz3EZS
GRASAC Gathering
Hidden Stories team member Melissa Moreton travelled north in early June, 2023, to beautiful Manitoulin Island on Georgian Bay, Ontario, to learn from attendees of the GRASAC gathering (The Great Lakes Research Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Arts & Cultures). The event, hosted at the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation, was attended by Indigenous community members (many Anishinabek from Manitoba, Toronto, and communities around Georgian Bay, Ontario) and settler-allies and included presentations on Indigenous material culture, treaty research, land stewardship, and governance. Moreton discussed two Indigenous books––one Munsee-related, and one Anishinaabe (Ojibwe)––currently housed in the Princeton University Library. Both are part of the Hidden Stories project, research guided by and furthered through collaboration with Indigenous community members.
The GRASAC event included presentations and lectures by visiting knowledge keepers and scholars as well as by speakers from the host community of M’Chigeeng First Nation, including Alan Ojiig Corbiere who discussed his collaborative work with Ted and Myna Toulouse (Sagamok First Nation), preserving the knowledge of their traditional birchbark harvesting and quillwork basketry. For more on GRASAC’s past and future events and news, visit their digital Newsletters and their Knowledge Sharing Platform here.
Read more about this and other research areas in the Hidden Stories Newsletters.
Meetings
Wampum Symposium
The McCord Stewart Museum in Montréal held an international symposium — Around Wampum: Histories and Perspectives — on February 22 and 23, 2024. Hidden Stories collaborator and Munsee-Delaware language keeper Kristin Jacobs (Eelunaapeewi Lahkeewiit / Delaware Nation at Moraviantown) attended. The interdisciplinary gathering brought together Indigenous knowledge keepers, elders, craftspeople, and artists, as well as settler-colonial and Indigenous scholars from across North America and Europe, to discuss the history of wampum, the traditional creation and use of belts / sashes, their role in diplomacy, wampum ‘literacies’ and materiality, and the challenges of accessing, re-connecting with, and repatriating / rematriating wampum items that live in collections outside of their source communities. The symposium was held in conjunction with the museum’s exhibition Wampum: Beads of Diplomacy, which included forty wampum belts from the McCord Museum and the Musée du quai Branly–Jacques Chirac in Paris, as well as community and private collections. It brought together an astounding 40 wampum belts and other related objects. The wampum exhibition and symposium provided a long-overdue opportunity for Indigenous community members to reconnect with cultural belongings.
The discussions around wampum offered an important view into the central role wampum played in diplomacy between Indigenous communities of Turtle Island and European colonizers and institutions. About the gathering, Jacobs observed:
"Listening to all of the speakers and presenters, I really felt a sense of pride for our peoples living during such a hostile period, but still trying to find peace and understanding for the better good of all nations involved. Their intelligence speaks to these beautiful works of art in these wampum belts and pipes, using all natural materials around them. They were constructed with gifts from Kukuna Ahkuy (mother earth) to make these important discussions about her, and giving the belts themselves their own spirits, hence being living objects."
Jacobs shared more on her symposium experience and how the gathering connected her to community and informed her work with wampum here.
Presentations from the wampum symposium are available for viewing on the McCord Stewart Museum YouTube channel.
