These are the papers of Washington, D.C. attorney James E. Curry, whose legal career included work both as a government attorney and in his own private practice. The bulk of the papers reflect his private practice in the area of Indian affairs.

Resolutions are by several midwestern Indian groups (Upper Sioux Community of Granite Falls, Minnesota; [Rosebud] Medicine Men and Associates, Incorporated; Prairie Island Tribal Council; Santee Sioux Tribe of Nebraska; Lower Sioux Indian Community, Morton, Minnesota; Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community; and Sinte Gleska College Faculty Senate) pr...

Copy photographs depicting buildings, farms, Dakota Indians, and mission school activities in and around the St. Francis Mission on the Rosebud Reservation. The majority of the photographs were made by Eugene Buechel, a Jesuit who served at St. Francis and Holy Rosary missions. The collection also includes some photographs by Fr. Salvatore Gentile ...

Photographs of Carlisle by J. N. Choate, three Rosebud Agency photographs by J. A. Anderson, the rest unidentified as to photographer. The photographs probably date between 1880 and 1895.

This collection contains photographs was shot circa 1887-1899 by Jesse Hasting Bratley and Horace G. Jennerson while they served as teachers on the Rosebud and Pine Ridge Reservations.

Four drawings of warfare on two loose pages torn from a ledger book. Other drawings from the same ledger were pasted into the donor's diary, which is now in the Special Collections Library at the US Military Academy at West Point. Bourke records there that the book was captured in June 1876 from a camp then believed to be Sioux. This encounter is n...

This collection includes glass plate negatives shot by J. Harold Waugh, the son of Indian Agent John H. Waugh on the Spirit Lake (Devil's Lake) reservation between 1890 and 1893. The agency headquarters were located at Fort Totten in North Dakota and Waugh (Sr.) oversaw both the Spirit Lake (Devil's Lake) and Turtle Mountain reservations. J. Harold Waugh's photographs include images of agency buildings, activities on the reservation and members of the Wahpetonwan Dakota [Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux Tribe] Tribe.

This collection contains 44 photographs in a photo album and 12 loose prints that depict American Indian leaders circa 1898 to 1901. The bulk of the photographs were shot at the Indian Congress of the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition, 1898 and the Greater America Exposition, 1899, both held in Omaha, Nebraska.

The Beatrice Medicine papers, 1913-2003 (bulk 1945-2003), document the professional life of Dr. Beatrice "Bea" Medicine (1923-2005), a member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, anthropologist, scholar, educator, and Native rights activist. The collection also contains material collected by or given to Medicine to further her research and activism interests. Medicine, whose Lakota name was Hinsha Waste Agli Win, or "Returns Victorious with a Red Horse Woman," focused her research on a variety of topics affecting the Native American community: 1) mental health, 2) women's issues, 3) bilingual education, 4) alcohol and drug use, 5) ethno-methodologies and research needs of Native Americans, and 6) Children and identity issues. The collection represents Medicine's work as an educator for universities and colleges in the United States and in Canada, for which she taught Native American Studies courses. Additionally, because of the large amount of research material and Medicine's correspondence with elected U.S. officials and Native American leaders, and records from Medicine's involvement in Native American organizations, the collection serves to represent issues affecting Native Americans during the second half of the 20th century, and reflects what Native American leaders and organizations did to navigate and mitigate those issues. Collection materials include correspondence; committee, conference, and teaching material; ephemera; manuscripts and poetry; maps; notes; periodicals; photographs; training material; and transcripts.

The National Congress of American Indian (NCAI), founded in 1944, is the oldest nation-wide American Indian advocacy organization in the United States. The NCAI records document the organization's work, particularly that of its office in Washington, DC, and the wide variety of issues faced by American Indians in the twentieth century. The collection is located in the Cultural Resource Center of the National Museum of the American Indian.