The following is an excerpt of an interview I conducted with Alex Lumelsky, COO and Creative Director for the Chaldean News, about the 2024 Community Collections Grant (CCG) project, Chaldeans: Portrait of an Evolving Community, as part of the Library’s Of the People blog series featuring awardees of the Center’s Community Collections Grant program.
What is the importance of having your project documentation preserved as a collection in the American Folklife Center archives at the Library of Congress (and eventually presented online, on the Library’s website)?
Chaldeans are a relatively small but distinct group of Christians who come from northern Iraq, with roots that date back to ancient Mesopotamia. Although Chaldean customs and traditions are quite different from those of Iraq’s Arab majority, because both groups originate from Iraq, Chaldean culture is often overlooked and misunderstood.
Michigan is home to the largest concentration of Chaldeans in the United States and the community has had an outsized impact on the region. With the inclusion of this collection in the American Folklife Center, Chaldean culture will be documented, preserved and shared with the public. The Chaldean American story is among many great immigrant stories, and deserves to be understood and preserved. This collection will enable it to have its own place in history.
As the halfway point of the grant period approaches, are there any project activities, such as documented community events, that you would like to share?
So far, we have documented a Chaldean wedding, the Chaldean Catholic Church’s First Communion program, and the inaugural Chaldean Convention, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. We also plan to also document the 51st Arab & Chaldean Festival as well as other cultural events. The CCF is also in the midst of a big construction project, creating a Chaldean Cultural Center that will house the world’s only Chaldean Museum and the Bishop Ibrahim Library, a collection which will contain many valuable works, including religious manuscripts that were rescued from ISIS in Iraq.
What are the anticipated outcomes of the project?
The CCF recently completed a project called, the Chaldean Story, which was designed to tell the history of Chaldean migration to Michigan. “Chaldeans: Portrait of an Evolving Community” seeks to capture a current snapshot of the community. By documenting the present and preserving stories of the past, our hope is to paint a more accurate and complete portrait of the Chaldean American community, for the broader public as well as the community itself. We believe it is important that future generations of Chaldean Americans know where they came from, the struggles their ancestors went through to get here, and the many contributions this community has made to their adopted homeland.
Explore the history of Michigan’s Chaldean community here. To learn about programs that support new Americans, visit chaldeanfoundation.org.