This collection contains 180 black-and-white acetate negatives and 71 gelatin silver prints taken by American artist Hortense Ferne. The images depict scenes of everyday life in the Mexican states of Oaxaca, Puebla, Morales, Guerrero and the Federal District, as well as the Teotihuacán archaeological site. A few images of San Jose Mission and the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, are also present.

This collection contains a land deed dated 1683 conveying the area near Anthony's Nose in New York to Stephanus van Cortlandt and one photographic negative shot in the 1970s depicting this land deed.

This collection contains 61 glass plate negatives taken by Rev. Thomas Huckerby between 1912-1920. Most of the images depict views of petroglyphs on St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Lucia and Grenada. Also includes eight images of objects collected by Huckerby; these objects are now in the collections of the National Museum of the American Indian.

The General Manuscripts and Ephemera collections contains documents and ephemera concerning people, events, and activities related to the historical and contemporary lives of Native peoples throughout the Western Hemisphere.

Negatives, postcards, and photographic prints made and acquired by Camilla S. Edholm in the San Blas Islands and Darién Province in Panama circa 1934-1938. These include images of Guna [Guna Yala], Chucunaque Guna (Kuna), and Emberá (Choikoi) community members.

The Edwin F. Coffin collection consists of photographs made by Coffin on behalf of the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation. Aside from a number of views of New York real estate owned by the Museum (1924), the remainder of the collection contains Museum of the American Indian excavation photographs made in the Bee Cave Canyon rockshelter ...

The Lee Howard Marmon photographic prints and contact sheets contain 36 color and black and white photographic prints and two color contact sheets of 9 images each. Subjects include Laguna and Acoma elders (1950-1965), publicity images of celebrities (1967-1973), Native American portraiture (circa 1987), the New Mexico pueblos and landscape, and the potter Lucy M. Lewis, her daughters, and their pottery (1987).

The majority of Pearse-Hocker's momentous negatives give eyewitness account to two weeks of both the mundane and brutal reality of daily life during the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. The takeover of the town and the conflict between about 200 members of AIM (American Indian Movement, the Native American civil rights activist organization begun in the 1968) and the United States Marshals Service began on February 27 and lasted for 71 days, resulting in tragedy on both sides of the conflict. Members of AIM along with some local Oglala (Lakota) Sioux from the local reservation took over the town in protest against the United States Government's history of broken treaties with various Native groups, the poverty and maltreatment of Native populations, as well as in defiance against the corruption and paternalism within the local subsidiary of the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs). The siege finally came to an end on May 5 when members of AIM and the assistant attorney general for the Civil Division of the US Justice Department Harlington Wood Jr. settled on a ceasefire. Kent Frizzell served as Chief Government Negotiator in the capacity of Assistant Attorney General (Land and Natural Resources Division, U. S. Department of Justice) and later as Solicitor, U. S. Department of the Interior. Among those pictured both during and post-conflict are AIM activists Dennis Banks, Clyde and Vernon Bellecourt, Ted and Russell Means, Frank Clearwater, Wallace Black Elk and Anna Mae Pictou Aquash. A small number of negatives also document AIM's takeover of the BIA building and the AIM Powwow both in Minneapolis in 1970.

This collection contains 43 black-and-white negatives and 37 gelatin silver prints taken by Godfrey J. Olsen. The images depict several archaeological excavations in West Long Branch and Middletown, Monmouth County, New Jersey, circa 1933. Also present are images from a survey of Bruneau Canyon, Owyhee County, Idaho, which was undertaken in 1937 for the Museum of the American Indian/Heye Foundation.

This collection contains 244 albumen prints and 87 acetate negatives taken by Rev. L.L. Legters in 1925-1926. The images depict scenes of everyday life among various tribes in Brazil and Bolivia, including the Bororo, the Chiquito, the Nambicuara, the Terena and the Umotina.