Manitos Community Memory Project
Shane Flores and Rebecca Sharp, both of New Mexico Highlands University, talk about building and activating the archive of the Manitos Community Memory Project, which uses a range of technology to digitally preserve the unique Indo Hispano culture of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado.
Shane Flores is the Research Assistant for the Manitos Community Memory Project and holds a BFA in Media Arts from New Mexico Highlands University in Las Vegas, New Mexico. He is currently the principal at studio wetFuture, developing history and culture based content for cultural institutions, including The Bradbury Science Museum, The City of Las Vegas Museum, New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs and UNM Maxwell Museum of Anthropology.
Rebecca Sharp is a BFA student with a focus in multimedia and interactivity in the Media Arts program at New Mexico Highlands, specializing in developing virtual reality cultural artifacts using Unity and Blender. She has been a part of creating and installing different exhibits for museums and historic sites in New Mexico, and plans to continue working around New Mexico while getting her MFA at Highlands University.
Manitos Community Memory Episode 1: Re-creating Lost Spaces
Manitos Community Memory Episode 2: Restoring Connections
Manitos Community Memory Episode 3: Activating the Archive
Manitos Community Memory Episode 4: Sustainability and Collaboration
Workshop Resources
Resources shared at the Community Memory Workshop at UNM. Video footage on YouTube includes all sessions from the workshop. Thanks to UNM's Isaiah Smith for filming and editing.
Sample digital materials for adding to the archive »
Manitos Community Memory Workshop Video : Workshop Introductions »
Manitos Community Memory Workshop Video : Optimizing Equipment for Digitization Fieldwork »
Manitos Community Memory Workshop Video : Introduction to Omeka-S »
Manitos Community Memory Workshop Video : Omeka-S Live Demo, Dublin Core, Custom Ontologies »
Manitos Community Memory Workshop Video : Hands On Archive Building »
Manitos Community Memory Workshop Video : Storytelling Approaches and Historical Interpretation »
Manitos Community Memory Workshop Video : Using Metadata in Storytelling »
Manitos Community Memory Workshop Video : Copyright and Permissions »
Share Your Village Memories!
12 Aug 2019
The Manitos Community Memory Project is an initiative to establish community-based digital cultural heritage archives grounded in the living culture of Indo-Hispano villages and diasporas of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado.
If you are from there, we invite you to come share your memories with the digital archive. We will have people ready to digitize your stories, photographs, documents, artifacts, heirlooms, and other materials. If you have a variety of material to share, please sign up for multiple slots.
Free Community Archive Workshop
Join library, archive, history, and museum professionals and students from around the state for a free, three-day intensive workshop offering hands-on training in collecting and managing cultural heritage content using the Omeka-S digital archive platform.
Participants will gain experience in digitizing diverse materials (oral histories, objects, documents, photographs, etc.) and collecting digital materials; adding those to the community archive; and interpreting existing materials. Discussions with Dr. Fred Gibbs will focus on the power of community archives to preserve, decolonize, and contextualize community memory and history. Hands-on workshops will be led by Dr. Margie Montañez and Amy Winter, MPA, from the Digital Initiatives and Scholarly Communication program at University Libraries.
The goal is to promote a collaborative and community-centered model for preserving and sharing cultural heritage in New Mexico, including protocols and training that address issues of ethical consent and shared decision-making. Participants will be asked to support rural librarians in northern New Mexico, who will be collecting these digital community memories.
Meals will be provided through UNM Dining Services. Ask if you need support for travel from outside the Albuquerque metro area.
Where: Zimmerman Library, UNM
When: August 12-14, 2019
Registration closes August 2.
More information about the Manitos Community Memory Project »
New Mexico Digital Heritage - Community Archive »
Readings for the Community Archive workshop (please read in advance) »
Thanks to the Manitos sponsors!
UNM Chicana and Chicano Studies »
UNM Center for Regional Studies »
Southwest Hispanic Research Institute »
Manitos Community Memory
This interdisciplinary and collaborative community engagement project will create a digital community-centered archive focusing on the cultural heritage and diasporas of the rural Indo-Hispano villages of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado where people self-identify as Manitos, whose long histories are intimately tied to the region.
Building on many efforts in the past, this recovery project leverages the momentum that has come from new archaeological and historical research, genealogical research and DNA testing, and the emergence of closed Facebook groups where Manitos from the villages and their diasporas are re-establishing family ties, revealing migration patterns, and reclaiming cultural heritage through the sharing of local histories and stories. These emerging digital resources are invaluable cultural resources that both the communities themselves and statewide cultural heritage stewards are eager to preserve in a non-extractive and non-exploitative way. Some of these stories are already visible on a blog about the project at manitos.net/.