Newspapers & Other News Media

American Indian Newspapers aims to present a diverse and robust collection of print journalism from Indigenous peoples of the US and Canada over more than 9,000 individual editions from 1828-2016.

This resource contains material from the Newberry Library’s extensive Edward E. Ayer Collection; one of the strongest archival collections on American Indian history in the world. The collection is truly vast, containing 130,000 volumes, over one million manuscript pages, 2,000 maps, 500 atlases, 11,000 photographs, and 3,500 drawings and paintings. The collection covers not only American Indian history, but archaeology, voyages, exploration and accounts of early America, the development of cartography, Philippine and Hawaiian history, and Central and South American history.

The Native American section of IV covers the late 1960s and early 1970s, which saw an increase of Native American activism and the rise of "Red Power" as an activist movement demanding greater educational and economic opportunities and tribal rights. At the same time, U.S. policy toward Native American tribes provided greater opportunities for indigenous people to manage local government and local issues. This led to the establishment of an active Native American press, with publications like NARP Newsletter, Many Smokes, and Native Movement, that championed such key issues as Native American rights, religious freedom, equal education, and preserving community, language and tribal sovereignty.