History of SWORP
In 1995 George Wasson initiated the first SWORP field research project in Washington, D.C.. This project involved researchers from the Department of Anthropology and Coquille Indian Tribe. SWORP I defined its project boundary as Southwestern Oregon and only copied documents directly related to that region. SWORP I brought back approximately 60,000 pages of information in the form of paper copies, microfilm, and maps from the National Anthropological Archives and National Archives. Photographic and audiotape collections were subsequently added to the collection. SWORP I was an immediate success and inspired the development of community, research and promotional projects. The Coquille Tribe and the University of Oregon had a potlatch giveaway in May 1997 where five western Oregon Tribes and two northern California Tribes, noted here, received copies of the SWORP collection. Jason Younker wrote his Masters Thesis on the Potlatch, and the Coquille Tribe produced a documentary videotape of the return of the potlatch tradition.
2001 Coquille Potlatch, Invited guests, foreground, UO President Frohnmeyer, JoAllyn Archambault, Lisa Watt.
2001 Coquille Potlatch, Smith River Feather Dancers on stage for ceremonial perfomance.
Loren Bommelyn, dancemaker.
In 1998 Mark Tveskov and Jason Younker coordinated SWORP II field research in Washington, D.C.. The research team during SWORP II was made up of individuals from four Oregon Tribes. Dene Hokema, and Amanda Mitchell from the Coquille Tribe, Patty Whereat from the Coos Tribe, Robert Kentta from Siletz, and David Lewis from Grand Ronde. Dene and David were then graduate students at the University of Oregon and Robert Kentta and Patty Whereat were directors of their Tribal cultural resource departments. Mark Tveskov coordinated the team in Washington, D.C. where they spent six weeks at the National Anthropological Archives, the National Archives and National Archives, College Park, Maryland. SWORP II had an expanded project region which included northern California and southwestern Washington and this yielded approximately 50,000 pages of paper copies.
Inventory Cover Designed by Deana Dartt 2001 Coquille Potlatch, Potlatch gifts on display.
In 1999, David Lewis began creating an annotated index to the SWORP collections. At this time, SWORP I and SWORP II were separate collections, housed in hollinger style banker boxes and non-acid free folders. SWORP I was in 8 boxes, and SWORP II was in 12 boxes, and each contained filing and storage problems, which if left as is would have prematurely aged and eventually led to the destruction of many manuscripts. In addition, the finding aids needed updating for efficient research. David Lewis, Jon Erlandson and Jason Younker worked to create a project to reorganize the SWORP collections to preserve them and provide ready access to the information. In winter 2000, Mr. Lewis received the first of many Graduate Teaching Fellowships to create an inventory and reorganize the collections into one coherent archive. Both goals of this phase were completed in May 2001 with the help of Deana Dartt, Don Day, and many other undergraduate students. The team utilized the Microsoft Access program to create the Inventory. The Inventory to SWORP was published by the Knight Library in June 2001.
On June 9th, 2001, the Coquille Indian Tribe and University of Oregon held the 2nd potlatch, where the 44 tribes who were invited to the Potlatch were given copies of the published Inventory and 17 tribes who took part in the Potlatch were given copies of relevant manuscripts. Copying of the collections to be distributed continued through May 2002 when the last collections were sent. The copying of the gifts and the Potlatch were aided in large part by the staff at the Knight Library, including Lisa Manotti, Susie Scroggins, Debra Craver, University Librarian, and Linda Long, Manuscripts Librarian.