Progress: one step at a time.

— Beginning of week Five —

I’ve spent some time doing more archival work over the weekend, and Brad’s done an incredibly great job on our contract for COPLAC while I worked extensively on our projects website as well as the abstract / thesis of our project. I personally feel like we are off to a great start to actually getting the project started, and believe that once we get to work as we currently have, our research itself will guide us in the direction that is necessary or best deemed fit.

I will be completely honest, I was not as overwhelmed with the contract itself, rather the content of our working bibliography and growing amount of sources are what appeal and peak my interest the most at the time. This past week (Week Four) was spent to gathering more information, sources, and archives that will help centralize our work and grasp a main concept. Brad and I met with Dr. Turner in regards to finding more primary sources and possible contacts with colleagues he has worked with in the past that may be of assistance. An example of this would be Dr. Collins, and how Dr. Turner called Dr. Collins during our meeting (Friday, Sept. 15th – Brad, Dr. T. & I) and asked about possible collaboration and help!

Please feel free to take a look at our digital COPLAC contract, which is still a rough draft. Here you will find our working thesis: “The Native American group known as the Wichita Indians suffered through immense forced migration during the 19th and 20th century due to Anglo – American influences in Northern Texas; hence the lack of current representation in places such as Wichita Falls, Texas.” This is additionally where we state our purpose, and the focus of our project and why it is a necessary contribution to the State of Texas’s history: “This project intends to place the Wichita and other regional populations into the appropriate historical context, ranging from their initial presence through forced migrations and ending in their continued influence on regional culture even after their departure.”

There is a lot of work to be expected from us on our end, seeing that there is little or no proper documentation of the Wichita themselves in the overall outlook of Native American history in regards to Wichita Falls. We hope to be able to uncover the possible effects of symbolism and misrepresentation of this population over time if they were indeed as influential as some historians account them to be. Nevertheless, I always maintain a positive outlook on what we are trying to accomplish through this work, so we’ll see how it goes. Until next time, Maria.

Link to MWSU Project Site – partnership.

Annotated Bibliography – a work in progress.

Rough Draft of the COPLAC contract.

2 thoughts on “Progress: one step at a time.”

  1. Nice post Maria. I’m very happy to see the partnership beginning to come full.

    These are good starts on the Thesis and the Statement of Purpose IMO — it will be a good idea to keep both ‘in front of you’ so that the slight tweaks and rewrites to both can be done easily as the project develops.

  2. Maria,

    You and Brad have made significant progress this week. You have done a good job defining your project and the various elements. Let’s discuss next what your content pages will look like.

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