The Southeastern Native American Collections Project (SNACP) is a new research effort that seeks to document, recontextualize, and make available ethnographic museum collections made among the Native American communities of the Southeastern United States. During fall 2009, work will begin studying the Eastern Cherokee and Florida Seminole holdings of the Mathers Museum of World Cultures. The project will draw upon work previously undertaken at the American Museum of Natural History, the Field Museum, the Gilcrease Museum, and the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History.

SNACP People

Project Director: Jason Baird Jackson
Graduate Assistant:  Jody Perkins
Graduate Assistant:  Janice Frisch

SNACP Funding

SNACP’s initial phase is being supported by the Mathers Museum (with funds from the Office of the Vice Provost for Research, Indiana University). Additional assistance has been (and continues to be) provided by the IU Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, the IU College of Arts and Sciences, and the Division of Ethnology at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History.


The Folklore and Ethnology Working Group is an virtual research laboratory in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University. It is directed by Jason Baird Jackson. Projects and collaborations focus on (1) museum ethnology, (2) heritage and cultural property issues, (3) material culture studies, and the (4) ethnographic and ethnohistorical study of expressive culture. Working Group collaborators are increasingly engaged in projects related to the place of digital media in the fields of folklore and ethnology and with issues related to open access.