Website for the Reclaiming Stories Project
This extraordinary interchange brings Liz Ellis and George Ironstrack into conversation with several other scholars to reflect on community-engaged research, including the Reclaiming Stories project. The article was selected as “editor’s choice,” and so is open access at the link below.
In a separate article in the JAH, Liz Ellis worked with Burgundy Fletcher and others to examine collaborative practices and dynamics in academic research regarding Indigenous Tribes. See this article here:
Check out this great story by George Ironstrack and Nate Poyfair about recent travels to Paris to visit painted hides.
Liz Ellis, Rossana Dobbs, Wess Farless, and Bob Morrissey reflected on the Reclaiming Stories Project and November 2025 trip to France.
This story highlights George Ironstrack’s work on the Versailles exhibition.
Reclaiming Stories team members collaborated in shaping a major international exhibition at the Palace of Versailles which opened in November 2026. Information about the exhibition is here.
Liz Ellis’s leadership in the recent Versailles exhibition on “Native Allies at the Court of Louis XV” is featured in this article.
Reclaiming Stories team members collaborated with French museum partners on an extraordinary exhibition commemorating the 1725 Indigenous delegation in Paris. Read about the exhibition here:
The Minohsayaki exhibit opens October 4, 2025 at the Illinois State Museum in Springfield. The traveling exhibit was originally mounted in Oxford, OH in Spring 2024. For more information, visit https://www.illinoisstatemuseum.org/
The exhibit will last through April 26, 2026.
In conjunction with the special exhibition, Minohsayaki ‘Painted Robes’: a Peewaalia and Myaamia Story of Reclamation, artist Michael Galban (Washoe and Mono Lake Paiute) presented a lecture entitled: “Requickening and Awakening the Dormant.“ The lecture presented on March 16th at the Richard and Carole Cocks Art Museum at Miami University (RCCAM), Oxford, Ohio, explored the histories of Woodland arts traditions, how these painted hide objects entered European and American collections. Galban has researched how these items were used and also documented over time, focusing on the significance and process of painted hides by Tribes of the Great Lakes region, particularly from the 17th-18th centuries. These painted hide robes have played an important role for Indigenous people – they were used for protection from the elements, and a place to convene with friends and loved ones, as well as tracing of history and culture over generations. Galban also discussed the significance of making the hides, painting techniques, usage of pigments, and sourcing of materials to create different colors. To find out more about the painted robes and the exhibition, please see this webinar hosted by the Miami University Alumni Association.
This program was supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation through the Humanities Without Walls Consortium, which is administered by the University of Illinois. The exhibition and program is part of the Reclaiming Stories Project.