liwalaawiiloxhbakaa (How We Lived): The Grant Bulltail Absáalooke (Crow Nation) Stories

Editor's Notes

1. Hi everyone! Thanks for attending our presentation today about the Grant Bulltail Oral Histories and Traditional knowledge Digital Collection! The official title of the collection, given by Mr. Grant Bulltail, himself, is Iiwalaawiiloxhbakaa: The Grant Bulltail Absáalooke Stories Collection. The word Iiwalaawiiloxhbakaa translates to How We Have Lived in the Crow language, while the term Absáalooke is what the Crow call themselves, and roughly translates to ‘People who live like birds along the river banks.” This collection is an amazing account of exactly what the title suggests, how the Crow have lived. Grant shares oral histories and knowledge of the natural world as the Crow have experienced it over thousands of years –  He documents their experiences from their creation on the banks of the Yellowstone River, to their trans-continental migration that took them west from Yellowstone, across the Pacific, across Asia and Europe, across the Atlantic Ocean, and finally back to Yellowstone, he provides detailed directions for how to kill a dinosaur and even tells how a Crow Warrior Uuxhkaa – killed the last dinosaur that the Absáalooke encountered. Mr. Bulltail also documents his peoples’ more modern and urgent history, the environmental catastrophes they face, their betrayals at the hands of the US Army, and the times that Crow Warriors defeated US Soldiers. He shares the Absáalooke’s rich and incredible history and their knowledge of the natural world as it has been passed to him through the historians and Chiefs that he grew up around, some of whom were family. He discusses how history of the Crow People has been manipulated, lost and distorted through the 19th and 20th centuries. Mr. Bulltail’s oral histories provide an overlooked perspective of US history, that is so important to hear and share. It is hard to overstate what an amazing opportunity and honor it has been for Andrea and I to work alongside Grant and everyone involved with this project to develop such an important collection.    Our digital collection is a small part of the work currently being done to digitize and preserve Absáalooke histories and culture. We have a slide towards the end of our presentation with links to some of this other work – but I’d like to make special mention now of the folks at Little Big Horn College in Crow Agency, Montana, who have also been working to create metadata for and digitize their collections of Absáalooke history. In fact, original copies of the Iiwalaawiiloxhbakaa collection will not only be housed at the Fife Folklore Archives at Utah State, they will also be held at Little Big Horn College in Crow Agency, Montana, and the Jackson Historical Society and Museum in Jackson, Wyoming - and our hope and understanding moving forward is that the metadata that we have worked so responsibly to develop can be used by these institutions, and that we can link with their content so that our combined work of digitizing Crow oral histories and culture can be shared broadly, especially within the communities of the Absáalooke.   So, with that brief overview of the collection aside, let me formally introduce myself and how I came to work with all of the amazing people involved with this project. I will then share a bio of Mr. Bulltail and play a clip from the collection, in which he shares his purpose for creating and sharing these oral histories and his knowledge. Then, I will talk with y’all about some of the complexities I faced as I was watching videos and creating metadata, before handing off to my colleague Andrea Payant, a metadata master,  to talk about the quality control processes we developed for the metadata. These processes ensure that we are being responsible with the material that Grant has shared with us, and creating metadata that is accurate and accessible to as many audiences as possible, and that meets the needs and standards as expressed to us by Mr. Bulltail and the other creators of this content.
2. So, my name is Nick Gittins, I attended Utah State University from 2008-2017, and I have worked at the Merrill-Cazier Library since 2011. I started working at the library in the Circulation Department (and still do!) my hope was always to eventually get an opportunity to work with the folks in the Fife Folklore Archives and Special Collections.  I received my degree in History, with minors in Latin and ancient Greek. Much of my research centered around oral traditions, storytelling, theater, and invective poetry in the ancient Mediterranean world and how, often, elements of these things snuck into the historical narrative, or were completely dismissed out of hand for ridiculous reasons. Although I spent most of my time studying the ancient Mediterranean, I loved Folklore and the folklore program at USU. Multiple times, I squeezed extra folklore classes into my schedule. In the fall of 2012, I was lucky enough to enroll in a folklore class taught by Mr. Grant Bulltail. It was unlike any class I had taken before, or any class I have taken since. It was honestly unlike any lecture or presentation that I have ever experienced…it was an amazing semester and that class was, wow. It was amazing. Grant would start speaking at the beginning of each class period, and weave his oral histories into the traditional white historical narrative with which the majority of his class would have been more familiar. It was astounding, an incredible perspective that spoke deeply to the injustices and environmental catastrophes that the Crow and other indigenous people experienced in the 19th and 20th centuries, and continue to face now. The class was so packed with information that I would sometimes have to just sit and listen and hope that my brain could remember what Grant was saying. I couldn’t take notes, I couldn’t keep up at times, but Grant was gracious with all of his students and met them where they were. It was a wonderful class. At the end of the semester, I recognized that I had just undergone an experience that most people would never be able to have, I was so grateful, and a little disappointed. I did not know if I would ever be able to experience something like that again.   But! In the spring of 2019, after years of working hard around the library, and repeatedly expressing my interest in the Fife Folklore Archives to my boss, I was finally given the opportunity to work as an intern in the Archives, and I was introduced to Randy Williams, former Curator of the Fife Folklore Archives. It was great, a perfect mentor/mentee match. Randy and I hit it off.  In one of our first conversations, as we were ironing out the details of my internship, Randy shared that Special Collections and Archives had received material donated by Mr. Grant Bulltail and the Crow Nation…” My heart leapt out of my chest! The universe was opening a door that had been closed forever, and I was receiving another chance to experience the wealth of knowledge and incredible perspective of Grant Bulltail all over again. Not only was I getting a chance to learn from Grant again - but I could play an important role in creating a repository, that centers his voice and his people’s important history. I jumped at the opportunity, and have not looked back. I don’t think any of us really realized the size and scope of the project we were undertaking, but let’s save that for later when we’re talking about metadata.    So, now that you know a little bit about me – let’s jump back to the thing that I think we are all excited to be here for - Grant Bulltail and this wonderful collection of oral histories and knowledge of the natural world. 
3. Grant Bulltail was born in 1940 and grew up on a horse ranch in the Pryor Mountains of Montana, but also spent much of his youth in the Heart Mountain, Wyoming area. In both states he worked as a ranch hand and competed professionally in local rodeos. His original home in Montana stood close to the home of the renowned Crow leader and relative of Grant’s, Chief Plenty Coups. Plenty Coups’ old home, which is close to the spot where Grant grew up, is now a museum called the Chief Plenty Coups Museum. His name, in the Crow language, is Bishéessawaache, One Who Sits Among the Buffalo, and he comes from one of the last of the traditional storytelling families of the Absáalooke. His great-great-great grandmother's brother was one of the last Akbindawoh, a word which translates to  ‘knowledge of the universe.’ This person was a storyteller, a geographer, a meteorologist, and an ethnographer among other things – as Grant says, the Akbindawoh knew everything that the Crow needed to know to survive, including their history.   Mr. Bulltail is a member of the Úuwuutasshe, or Greasy Mouth clan, and a child of his father’s clan – the Ashiíooshe, or Sore Lip clan. He is a member of the Crow Culture Commission at Crow Agency, Montana, a Lodge Erector and Pipe Carrier in his people’s Sacred Tobacco Society, and a Vietnam War veteran, having served in the Marines.   In the mid nineteen sixties, after serving with the Marines, Grant caught a bus from California back to Montana, and had a four-hour layover in Logan, Utah. He decided to check out what was going on with the old buildings on top of the hill, and immediately fell in love with Utah State University. Shortly after returning to Montana and getting married(!), he spent a year at Utah State University, during which time he studied with folklorist, Austin Fife. His relationship with USU and the Fife Folklore Archives continued to develop throughout the years, and since his initial experiences, Grant has served as both a visiting lecturer and adjunct professor – much of the content in the collection was filmed during these visits to USU. While teaching at USU in 2009, he worked together with folklorists Sharon Kahin, the former director of the Jackson Hole Historical Society Museum, and Jeannie Thomas in the English department at USU to establish the Native Memory Oral History Project, through which the group was able to further develop the collection. Over the period from 2001 to 2018, they filmed Grant sharing stories of how the Crow lived and the edible and medicinal plants they used in and around the territories where the Absáalooke used to wander – including spots around Yellowstone National Park, the Heart Mountain, Wyoming, area, and Rainy Buttes, South Dakota, where Grant tells the Battle of Rainy Buttes, and explains how Crow Warriors killed Sitting Bull. This brief list mentions only highlights, as the group filmed in dozens of different locations. During this time, Mr. Bulltail also began working with Randy Williams and Brad Cole in the Fife Folklore Archive to develop a plan for archiving his people’s oral histories and working with regional partners to create a robust digital collection.   Utah State received hard drives containing recorded histories and traditional wisdom intermittently between 2012 and 2018. In the spring of 2018, when the last materials were deposited, Randy Williams began working with Grant to get a signed Memorandum of Understanding from the Crow Nation. Once the memorandum was obtained, in the spring of 2019, the USU library began working on the collection, and I was lucky enough to become involved, processing the collection and creating metadata!    Now, before we start talking about metadata and spreadsheets and everything that goes with that, I would like to play a video from the collection, and allow Mr. Bulltail, himself, to explain the significance of the oral histories and knowledge, and why it is so, so important for this knowledge to be preserved and shared. Play 18:57 – 32:07 of The Crow Relationship with the Land and their Lost Histories (SCAFOLK073-BulltailGrant-Julyxx2013-Video_5.mp4).   So yeah, that’s Grant Bulltail described briefly and the scope of the project as defined by his own words – I hope this little teaser of the wealth of knowledge in the Iiwaalawalokebahka collection has piqued your interest!! As I mentioned earlier, and as you can maybe see from that video – the size and scope of this collection is massive, so let’s talk about some of the complex issues that we ran into while we were creating metadata, and how USU developed policies and best practices for managing so much sensitive and important content. 
4. As I mentioned earlier, the massive size of this collection was not apparent at first glance, and we only began to really understand this as I worked through content and created metadata. The collection, as donated, contained 2 hard drives that featured video, audio and images. One labelled Spring Ranch Grant Bulltail July 2015 U State U Fife Folklore Archives, and another labelled Grant Bulltail 2002-2016 Jackson Hole Historical Society and Museum Fife Folklore Archives USU. There are also a few hand written notes from Mr. Bulltail, a scrapbook commemorating a ceremony that took place at Heart Mountain, Wyoming, and 9 Sony DVmini video cassette tapes.   I began working on the [SPRING RANCH HARD DRIVE] first. It contained 212 video files – 14 hours, 55 minutes and 10 seconds worth of footage, shot over 5 days in July of 2015 at Spring Ranch in Dubois, Wyoming. All 212 videos were in .mov format, and I worked with Andrea and my colleagues in Digital Initiatives at the Merrill-Cazier library to convert the files to .mp4, and document the conversion process by noting in the metadata both the old and new file names, as well as where the file was, and is now stored in the folklore archives, as of when I am finished with it. All creator and contributor info was readily apparent and easily attributed, the location and dates are all stated clearly, easy-peasy.  For Digital Initiatives to convert the content of the Spring Ranch Hard Drive, and for me to watch, listen and create metadata that I felt was adequate and accessible enough, took about a month and a half, as I was only able to dedicate up to six hours of my time at work away from my Service Desk management responsibilities in Course Reserves. But the process was smooth, all of the contributors were easy to attribute, the names of plants and important Crow men and women are stated clearly-the videos were great to work with.   As I was wrapping up the metadata on the Spring Ranch Hard Drive, I began browsing the content of the second hard drive. As the label suggests, it contained fieldwork filmed between 2002 and 2016, stored in folders within folders with in folders. 459 video or audio files, and 100s of image files, all loosely organized by year. And I use the word loosely, very loosely. In total, the hard drive contains 5 days, 6 hours, 2 minutes and 47 seconds worth of recorded fieldwork.  Digital Initiatives again assisted me with converting files, but this time it was, unsurprisingly, not so simple – we converted .mov to .mp4 again, but some videos were also stored in .mts, .mxf, ACVHD .avi formats, and we converted multiple .wav files to .mp3. In the spring of 2019, when we started processing the collection, most of us thought that we could get through all of the content by late September – it turns out we were very wrong. All of us have been surprised by and grateful for the seriously hard work and the dedication of the producers of this collection.   Including the 9 videos found on the DVmini cassettes mentioned in the slide – the total run time of all collected material stretches over 6 days, nonstop. Because of the incredible work of Grant Bulltail and his friends, our timeline for finishing the project was shattered – and still to this very day, nearly a year after we visited Grant for the last QC meeting, which Andrea will talk more about soon, I am still going over content in the collection, following the policies and procedures we’ve outlined and adapted, creating the initial metadata, before passing it on to Andrea and our colleagues in Digital Initiatives to QC with many of the projects’ stakeholders. This brings me to another complex part of creating the metadata for this collection.
5. As you would expect, such an enormous undertaking required an enormous cast of contributors and producers, organizers, donors, film crews, folklorists, librarians, current/retired/ and future university faculty, historical societies, archives and museums collaborating from all across the Midwest. And, as mentioned earlier – it was filmed all over the land through which the Absáalooke were once able to roam freely.  The size and scope of the content on the 2002-2016 Hard drive was astounding, and although the material on the 2002-2016 hard drive covered topics similar to those covered in the Spring Ranch Hard Drive – it also contained so much more. Grant’s stories and knowledge covered a range of topics, and we made to sure document all of this in our metadata.
6. Although the content was loosely organized, and dates and contributors weren't very apparent upon first glance – as I began watching videos and processing material into the collection, I would often discover missing contributor/donor/location/date information. However, this was not always the case. We have still encountered many holes in our information or other little difficulties such as fuzzy video or audio quality, occasionally only being able to hear audio in one ear, and even videos containing footage of other tribes, or audio of people that are not speaking about anything related to the Crow!  Files with audio or video problems that were still able to be used, and that still shared some important information are included in the metadata sent forward for quality control – with their problems clearly noted.  There was also one folder, containing 15 other folders full of audio, video and images that was labelled Unknown Date. As I’ve worked through the collection, I realized that much of material located in the Unknown Dates folder is actually duplicate content that has already been processed into the collection. This has come as quite a relief. We made sure to develop processes for documenting duplicate material and alternate angles in our metadata, and by continuing to communicate with the project's many different stakeholders and with each other, we developed a rigorous and inclusive quality control process, that not only ensures accuracy in our metadata, but will also help us fill the holes in our information.  So yeah, that's me, Grant, and an introduction to both Iiwalaawiiloxhbakaa : The Grant Bulltail Absáalooke Stories Collection and the complexities of developing metadata for a project like this, now I'd like to hand you over to my colleague Andrea Payant, to talk to you more about metadata and our thorough process for quality control!
7. As Nick has just outlined, Metadata can be very complex, especially for a collection like this one. We do our best to overcome difficulties of this nature and one of our most effective means of accomplishing this is employing crowdsourcing methods, whenever possible, to help create descriptive content and to improve overall metadata quality. Examples include: Outsourcing, organizing community events, and conducting metadata interviews. Outsourcing, as we practice it, involves the production of descriptive metadata by stakeholders outside the CMS unit like Special Collections and Archives curators, students conducting fieldwork projects, interns, collection donors, community partners, and digital collection users. Most commonly, different stakeholders are given instruction on the basics of metadata creation best practices and then they utilize a simplified template metadata spreadsheets that guide their work which is then submitted to various units for review. CMS supplements the initial metadata with additional formatting and content needed to meet the current local, regional, and national metadata standards set for the relevant system or platform. Community events we have been a part of focus on collecting materials on a specific topic or area of interest. SCA, CMS, and Digital Initiatives staff are at these events to help collect, describe, digitize, and interview attendees. Participants have included researchers, community scholars, area experts, and donors.  These types of events can facilitate networking on a deeper level than usual, providing  a space to meet with communities where they live, work, and recreate. Metadata interviews, in which curators, fieldworkers, donors, or community partners sit with cataloging and often other library staff to provide assistance with material description are particularly effective for creating robust metadata. During interviews, we gather as much information as we can to answer the who, what, where, and when questions about a collection and, whenever possible, answer these questions at the item level.  Our library units work collaboratively and shape our practices to leverage shared knowledge. We focus on deeply embedding community scholars, collection donors (and the like) in the process of metadata creation. As a result, these expert voices give our descriptive content more accuracy, diversity, equity, and inclusivity. This is certainly the case with this collection as we received guidance directly from Grant Bulltail himself This slide includes a photo of a metadata interview we conducted with Grant Bulltail last year. Nick and I along with Randy Williams, the former fife folklore archives curator, spent the day with Grant gathering information and asking questions to help improve our understanding and description of his work. It was a great privilege to meet him and to be able to continue working with him as we move forward
8. The next points will give you more information on the general background of our decision-making process for metadata creation So, preliminary planning for the Grant Bulltail collection involved discussions regarding where the collection would ultimately be made available. USU Libraries uses multiple platforms for digital collections, including Omeka for exhibits, CONTENTdm for Digital History Collections, and DigitalCommons, our institutional repository, for content produced by USU faculty, Students, and Staff. Each platform has different metadata considerations so different choices would have different implications for processing and workflows.  Since Grant Bulltail was a student of Austin Fife, served as an adjunct professor at USU, and produced parts of this collection’s content while at USU, the decision was made to put the collection in our institutional repository.  But, I want to mention that our colleagues from Little Bighorn College have suggested that we seriously consider putting this collection in Mukurtu instead of or in addition to digital commons – Mukurtu is an open source platform built with and for indigenous communities. Planning and discussing regarding the possible use of Mukurtu have been stalled, amongst other things, because of COVID-19 but, we are expecting to investigate the feasibility of using the platform. My personal impression is that it would be very beneficial to use this platform highlight Grant’s collection and may make it easier to connect this collection to other collections comprised of Crow Nation content. The Metadata planning process has been and will continue to be a collaborative effort between our library units as well as with those who have already worked with Grant on other collections before.
9. Here is a basic outline of our metadata quality control process – stage one is underway now and further stages are soon forthcoming In stage one - as Nick works with Grant’s video files to produce preliminary metadata, he sends a spreadsheet to me to do a preliminary check for the typical areas of assessment – including checking for completeness, correctness, and consistency.  After our first test submissions were completed, Nick, myself, and digital initiatives staff met together to discuss important developments and identify areas of improvement – our early conversations resulted in a general list of things to watch for – some specific examples were avoiding duplicate titles, adding roles for creators and contributors (based on MARC relator terms), removal of references to filenames in titles and descriptions, and consistent date format.  We have also discussed incorporating the Crow language, wherever possible. Grant has assisted with a little of this so far but we hope to develop this more - planning and discussions are continuing on that front  After Nick and I go through our checks, digital initiatives staff will check the files and spreadsheets to prepare them for uploading and ingest into digital commons.  After the first stage of quality control we plan to send a subset of records and files to Sharon Kahin to evaluate and send feedback  As a final step, we will have Grant check a subset of the records himself and send us feedback  While we hoped to be further along in the process of making this collection available to the public, we are striving to handle this content with the proper care and consideration that it deserves. We are very grateful for the efforts of our colleagues, inside and outside USU, Grant Bulltail, and the Crow people who are helping make this project a reality. 
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