Over the past decade, tribal leaders, archivists, and librarians in the United States and Canada have expressed an interest in improving existing relationships and developing new relationships with nontribal institutions that hold American Indian archival material. In April 2006 a group of 19 Native American and non-Native American archivists, librarians, museum curators, historians, and anthropologists gathered at Northern Arizona University Cline Library in Flagstaff, Arizona. The participants included representatives from 15 Native American, First Nation, and Aboriginal communities. The group met to identify best professional practices for culturally responsive care and use of American Indian archival materials.

As a result of the meeting, the group drafted a 25-page document entitled Protocols for Native American Archival Materials. The First Archivists Circle, a recently incorporated nonprofit organization composed of Native American and tribal archivists, will serve as the home for the Protocols project. The best practices document includes recommendations for libraries and archives as well as for Native American communities. We are all responsible for improving practice.

The contributors to the protocols hope that the lines of communication opened by this work will serve as the genesis for an ongoing national discussion around different approaches to the management, preservation, and transmission of Native American knowledge and information resources.

The goals of these protocols are as follows:

• To bring an awareness of issues relating to American Indian archival resources to archivists, librarians, and Native communities, especially as these relate to intellectual property, ethics, preservation, handling, access and use
• To encourage non-Native American collecting institutions small and large to engage in consultation with relevant Native American communities and pueblos on these collections
• To outline some reasons why consultation is essential and useful and to give information on the basics for such consultation
• To open the way to a view that different approaches to knowledge have equal validity and impact archivists and librarians in their professional work with collections
• To help archivists, librarians, and Native American communities to work together to improve descriptive information, appropriate care, and ethical use of collections
• To bring about a renewed exchange between institutions and communities, archivists, librarians, and researchers about collections and resources on one hand, and problems and issues on the other
• To heighten awareness of, and encourage researchers to adhere to, Native American community protocols for work in those communities
• To increase an awareness of Native American sovereignty, intellectual approaches, and laws or community among non-Native archivists, librarians, and researchers.

Librarians and archivists should be aware that each tribe, band, and community is unique. The protocols must be interpreted and applied to meet the needs of the materials of the specific tribal community and the institution.

The proposed standards and goals articulated in the protocols are meant to inspire and to foster mutual respect and reciprocity. The contributors intend this document to be a work in progress—subject to revision and enhancement. Comments and queries can be submitted via the web site to 〈archives.protocols@nau.edu〉.¹

The protocols project received generous support from the American Library Association Office for Diversity, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the National Library of Medicine, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, The Bay and Paul Foundations, the Northern Arizona University Institute for Native Americans, and Mary and P. David Seaman.