Archive for the Geography and Maps Division Category (19 posts)

Harjo, Library Honored by Native American Tribal Association

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Joy Harjo walks onstage for a performance of poetry and music at the Library. Photo: Shawn Miller.

The Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums has presented one of its most significant awards to the Library and former U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo for “Living Nations, Living Words,” Harjo’s signature project during her 2019 to 2022 term.

Harjo, the first Native American to hold the nation’s poet laureate position, was honored with the ATALM’s Outstanding Project/Non-Native Organization Award for her work that shows the dynamic, living poetry being written and performed by Native Americans across the country. The project features 47 Native American poets through an interactive StoryMap and a newly developed Library audio collection. The map is marked by dots showing the home region of each Native poet and features their photo, biography and a link to hear them recite and talk about one of their works.

“I conceived the idea of mapping the U.S. with Native Nations poets and poems,” said Harjo, an enrolled member of the Muscogee Nation. “I want this map to counter damaging false assumptions — that Indigenous peoples of our country are often invisible or are not seen as human. You will not find us fairly represented, if at all, in the cultural storytelling of America, and nearly nonexistent in the American book of poetry.”

As part of the project, Harjo edited a companion anthology, also titled “Living Nations, Living Words,” published in 2021 by the W. W. Norton & Company in association with the Library. Harjo also edited “When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry,” published by W. W. Norton & Company in 2020.

The ATALM presented the award during its October annual meeting, saying it “applauds Harjo’s work to illuminate the poetry of Native America and expresses its gratitude to the Library of Congress for a living tribute to a vibrant culture.”

Accepting the award alongside Harjo was Lori Pourier, president of the First Peoples Fund and member of the Board of Trustees for the Library’s American Folklife Center. Pourier (Oglala Lakota), an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, offered remarks on behalf of Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden.

The ATALM’s Guardians of Culture and Lifeways International Awards Program identifies and recognizes organizations and individuals that serve as outstanding examples of how Indigenous archives, libraries, museums and individuals contribute to the vitality and cultural sovereignty of Native Nations. The Guardian Award takes its name from the sculpture that stands atop the Oklahoma State Capitol — the work of Seminole Chief Kelly Haney.

For more information about the Poet Laureateship as well as other poetry and literature programs of the Library, visit the Poetry and Literature website.

Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. Du Bois, and the Maps of American Racism

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Ida B. Wells was 30 years old in 1892, living in Memphis and working as a newspaper editor, when a mob lynched one of her friends. Distraught, the pioneering journalist set out to document the stories of lynching victims and disprove a commonly asserted justification — that the murders were a response to rape. Wells’ […]

A Fond Farewell to John Hessler, LOC Polymath

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Every institution has its institutions, and one of the Library’s is John Hessler, who will retire from the Geography and Map Division at the end of this month. He holds many titles, official and unofficial. One of the official ones is curator of the Jay I. Kislak Collection of the Archaeology & History of the […]

Library of the Unexpected: Cocaine, Hair and…Wedding Cake?

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The Library of Congress has unexpected items in its vast collections — the contents of Lincoln’s pockets when he was assassinated; cocaine used in a groundbreaking 19th-century surgery; a lock of Beethoven’s hair; 3,000 year old cuneiform tablets from modern-day Iraq; Mesoamerican incense burners that are more than 2,000 years old; and a piece of Tom Thumb’s wedding cake, now nearly 160 years old.

The Genius of Cameroon’s Sultan Ibrahim Njoya

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The Library preserves some of the papers of Sultan Ibrahim Njoya, the visionary leader of the Bamum kingdom in modern-day Cameroon in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Njoya’s royal family had ruled their region of the grasslands for hundreds of years. Under pressure from the colonial powers of Germany and then France, he created the first map of the kingdom, a language, an alphabet and a religion. He was a renowed patron of the arts, encouraging teachers, sculptors and artisans.

Pocket Globes: The Whole World in Your Hand

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The Library of Congress is now home to a huge collection of nearly 100 pocket globes — miniature globes that were fashionable art objects from the 17th to 19th centuries, during the age of exploration. The globes, perhaps three inches in diameter, were made of everything from ivory to papier mache, some housed in expensive sharkskin boxes. The family and foundation of the late Jay I. Kislak donated 74 pocket globes to the Library recently, adding to the collector’s prodigious donations to the Library’s Geography and Map Division.

Researcher Stories: Armand Lione and the Search for Native American History in D.C.

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American Indians walked the land where the nation’s capital city now stands long before Europeans arrived. Local historian Armand Lione shares that history when he talks about his research, much of which is conducted at the Library of Congress.