ALL ABOUT CIVAM
The Crow Indian Virtual Archive & Museum (CIVAM) is a virtual repository of Crow Indian cultural items and images housed in public and private collections around the world.
Our Mission
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To collect, curate, and interpret digital representations of Crow materials for Crow Indians and all others interested in Crow history and culture
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To re-acquaint Crow Indians with materials removed from their reservation community so that these items and images can contribute to the on-going cultural life of Crow people
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To provide Crow elders with access to these materials so that they can explain their meaning and significance, improve the items’ attributions, and educate younger generations about them
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To maintain a digital storehouse of Crow family heirlooms currently held in private homes to document Crow culture all the way to the present.
Origins
Peggy White Wellknown Buffalo had a vision to help, as she said, “the generations in front us to have an understanding and knowledge of their roots.” She went to her clan father and brother Leroy White and to the Crow Nation Chairperson Clara Nomee. Both gave Wellknown Buffalo permission to fulfill her vision to re-acquaint the Crow Indian community with items that had long-ago been removed from the reservation. Chairman Nomee specifically gave Wellknown Buffalo written permission to access Crow Indian collections at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American Indian (NMAI) in 2001.
Susie Kelly helped Wellknown Buffalo recruit and arrange for Crow elders Tilton Old Bull and Clayton Mountain Pocket to visit the NMAI in Washington, DC. To paraphrase Wellknown Buffalo: The mission was for those people to come forward with knowledge about the cultural items. Our bundles are dying, because almost no one is left with knowledge about them.
Kelly and Wellknown Buffalo led seven trips to the NMAI between 2001 and 2008. Kelly and Wellknown Buffalo videotaped Old Bull and Mountain Pocket as they examined and described the history and stories about the sacred and non-sacred items there. Wellknown said, “The bundles wanted to breathe. I prayed over each bundle and asked it permission to be opened.”
For ten years, the videotapes of the elders’ encounters with the items stored at the national museum sat at The Center Pole compound without seeing the light of day. Wellknown Buffalo and Kelly were concerned that Wellknown Buffalo’s vision would not come to fruition.
In the summer of 2018, University of Delaware Professor Cindy Ott visited her friends at The Center Pole and happened to ask Wellknown Buffalo and Kelly if there was a material culture project that Ott and her students could help them with. It was a fortuitous question that led to the creation of the Crow Indian Virtual Archive and Museum. Wellknown Buffalo gave Ott permission to create CIVAM because, she said, Ott is an educator. Wellknown Buffalo and Kelly were relieved that the items would no longer be in storage, but would be “used to educate others, to open up minds to what happened in our past. I would love to have my great-great-granddaughter learn about them in school. Lots of stories are now lost. This is for the future of our children. That is why this is important to me,” Wellknown Buffalo said.
The CIVAM is maintained by students, staff, and faculty at the University of Delaware Departments of History, Museum Studies, and Computer Science with support from the UNIDEL Foundation and in collaboration with The Center Pole on the Crow reservation in Montana.
Please send queries to civam.mt@gmail.com.
People
Peggy White Wellknown Buffalo
"Ba La Se She Lesh" (She Who Wears the Money) grew up traditional Crow. Sent away to Indian boarding schools at a young age, she has nurtured more than two hundred children in her home as an adult. She practices the Crow sweat lodge and has sponsored numerous Native American Church prayer meetings. With Susie Kelly, she runs The Center Pole, a Native non-profit organization founded in 1999 on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana and spearheads many community development projects, including the CIVAM.
Susie Kelly
"Dek Gash Bish" (Woman Eagle) helped Peggy create the Center Pole in 1999, bringing practical skills to blend with traditional ways. Originally a photo editor, researcher, writer and project manager in the publishing industry, she brought up multicultural children and worked providing promising youth with opportunities for many years. Her motto:
"Start where you are...Use what you have...Do what you can"
-Arthur Ashe.
Bill Yellowtail
Text will be added soon!
Cindy Ott
Cindy is an Associate Professor of History and Material Culture Studies at the University of Delaware. She began her career at the Smithsonian Institution in the 1980s and she has continued to develop public humanities projects ever since. After serving as the history curator at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana from 2004 to 2006, she started spending summers on the Crow reservation in Montana. She has been working on a local ranch, helping out at The Center Pole, and conducting research for her book Biscuits and Buffalo: The Reinvention of American Indian Culture in the 20th and 21st Centuries.
University of Delaware Students
A special thanks for their great efforts and dedication to the project goes to UD software engineering students:
Joshua Babbitt, Jason Belak, Brian Bugieda, Connor Daniel, Joshua Davis, Brandon Dongfack, Brianna Emrich, Nicholas Fafel, Sophia Freaney, Sebastian Gomez Carrosa, Justin Henke, Sean Hennessey, Nathan Joseph, Joy Kitson, Emily Kresho, Evan MacGregor, Nick Mancuso, Timothy Mazzarelli, Zachary Muzzleman, Christopher Outhwaite, Johnny Pabst, Malachi Parks, Trevor Seidel, Samuel Shultis, James Skripchuk, Karl Stomberg, Andrew Thompson, Stephen Wiafe, Bradley Waddington, Mark Wolgin, and Sam Zabaldo
And to humanities students:
Ellie Gorman, Adam Grimes, Danielle Haugk, Grace McKeon, Matthew Monk, Megan O’Donell, Fabian Martin Rempfer, Ryan Wood, and Sophie Zaidman who helped envision it.
Contact Us
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To find out more about CIVAM and to access collections, please contact civam.mt@gmail.com