FamilySearch Wiki:WikiProject Indians of North America

Contributors

Userbox for WikiProject Indians of North America This user is a participant in WikiProject Indians of North America.

Leader --Rorie Jenson

Contributors -- 

Lynda Avery, Blake Reneau, Norma Dalton, James Tanner

Project members: you can also add {{User WikiProject Indians of North America}} to your user page to identify yourself as a member of the project and add your name to the Category:WikiProject Indians of North America participants.

Roles of Contributors

Wiki projects need people playing various roles. Here are some possible roles or skill sets that are needed in the Indians of North America Project. If you have a particular interest in one or more of these roles, please communicate those interests to the Project Coach.:

Volunteer: an entry-level member of the project, this person can handle simple assignments such as "copy and paste" tasks and adding links.

Googler: a team member who can do everything a Volunteer can do plus use search engines to find relevant Web sites and add links to those Web sites.

Uploader: a team member who is interested in locating images appropriate for the project and uploading those images to American Indian pages.

Researcher: A team member who can do everything Googlers can do plus be assigned to conduct research on a subject, make a list of references located, and recommend what should be written.

Writing Specialist/Editor: A team member who can do everything a Researcher can do, plus synthesize what was found by other team members into a succinct wiki page or section of a page. These folks are good at grammar, writing bridges between ideas, adding intuitive headings, etc.

Content Specialist: A team member who can do everything done by Researchers, plus review and recommend additional content.

Coach: Alternately called Team Lead, Mentor, Master (as in Master Craftsman), Craftsman, Subject Coordinator, Subject Moderator, Project Coach, Coach, or Team Coach, this person is knowledgeable about the subject in question. This person usually has a legacy of knowledge he desires to leave to the community, and could use some help fulfilling other project roles.

Scope of the project

There is much to learn of the Indians of North America, including their history, types of records, the location of those records, web sites of interest, and much more. The study is large enough to justify approaching this project in phases.

The purpose of the FamilySearch Wiki is to provide its users with enough information about the history of the group, locality, or record type to explain something of the content, location, and use of records. It is NOT the intent to have the Research Wiki be the end-all location of the history of all tribes, bands, etc. The focus for the Research Wiki is to be on records and their use. For that reason, we must focus on where known records exist, describe those records and their custodians, and explain the content of the records to those wishing to trace their ancestors.

Foundation: state pages

A foundation has been laid for the project by establishing a page for the Indians of each state of the United States. Those pages include a list of the tribes and bands of Indians currently residing in the state and those historically associated with it. The state pages also list reservations, Bureau of Indian Affairs agencies, Indian schools and health facilities, important web sites, and a bibliography for further reading. Each of these tribes, agencies, reservations, etc. are deserving of a page of their own.

Phase 1: Tribes and agencies

Phase One of this project will seek to address:

1. The Indian tribes of the United States, a brief history of each tribe and its records, the location of tribal headquarters, the reservations and BIA agencies related to those tribes, and some significant web sites of interest.
2. The BIA agencies in the United States, their history and name changes, changes of their jurisdiction, the tribes for which they were responsible, the types and locations of the agency records, especially those in the National Archives and its regional archives, with internal links to other records and their location.

Tribal pages

In the United States, there are 562 federally-recognized Indian entities, including nearly 200 Indian villages and other groups in the State of Alaska. In Phase One of this project, only the 364 tribes and bands in the "lower 48" will be addressed. In addition, there are some historical name changes of those tribes that must be addressed. Of these, stub articles have already been established for 394 of them, leaving only 6 more for which stub articles need to be established. Of the 400 tribes, approximately 15 of them have significant content already included in their pages, leaving content to be added to some 385 others.  All of the stub articles will be added by 15 December 2009. Content will be added to the remaining tribal pages in sprints between 15 December 2009 and 1 April 2010.

Agency pages

There are approximately 368 BIA agencies which currently exist or have existed within the borders of the "lower 48" since their establishment in the 1800s. Some have undergone name changes, the tribes for which they have been responsible have changed, and some have ceased to exist. If records were created by those agencies, a separate page must be created, with cross-references to related agencies. Pages for 342 of these agencies have already been created, leaving only 26 more to be created. Most of the agency pages already have significant content, but many need some additions, and internal links to and from the tribal pages need to be established.  The remaining agency pages will all be added by 2 February 2010. Content will be added to the remaining agency pages in sprints between 2 February 2010 and 1 April 2010.

Phase 2: Reservations

Phase Two will deal with the reservations, Pueblos of New Mexico, and California rancherias. Four hundred forty reservations and pueblos have been identified in the United States, with stub articles created for 285 of them. Of the 66 identified California rancherias, stub articles have been created for 61 of them. Content must still be added to virtually all of the pages in these categories.

Additional phases will be added in the future.

Requirements and tasks

This table tracks the requirements the team is trying to fulfill in the current sprint. A sprint is a period of days in which a team seeks to fulfill certain project requirements. Several tasks may have to be done to fulfill a single requirement; hence the Task column. If there are instructions needed for the task, those instructions will be added to the "Notes" column. As you volunteer for a task, place three tildes like this ~~~ in the "Sign Up" column. This places your User Name in that column. More than one person may sign up for a single task, in which case, the task will be coordinated by the Team Coach. Team members should report their progress at least weekly to the Team Coach who will complete the final five columns.

A more comprehensive list of tasks being worked on or needed is also available.

Sprint 1: 3 May 2010 to 1 June 2010

Focus for this sprint will be on continuing to add content to the Tribal pages, reservation pages, and agency pages. We will also continue to add internal links between tribal pages, agencies, reservations, and states.

Requirement	Task	Notes	Sign Up by inserting three tildes here (~~~)	Comments	No. est.	No. Done	% Done	Task  Done	Requirement Done
Add content to tribal pages	Complete the adding of names and addresses of tribal headquarters	Requires "Google" searches for official tribal addresses	Jbparker Gmajande	A few historical tribes do not have a current tribal headquarters	400	364	91%
Add content to tribal pages	Continue to add external links to important web sites	Requires "Google" searches to find the 5 most important web sites for each tribe	Gmajande User:HealeyJE	Not all tribes have 5 important sites. The figure for no. done represents tribes for which at least one important site has been added.	400	413	103%
Add content to tribal pages	Continue to add external links to Tribal constitutions	Requires "Google" searches to find them	Gmajande	Not all the tribes have Constitutions and some who do, do not have them online.	400	235	59%
Add content to tribal pages	Add treaty information to tribal pages	Requires a content specialist	HealeyJE		400	48	12%
Add to reservation pages	Add category to reservation pages	Task instructions available	MistySky		265	157	59%
Prepare pages for NGS demo	Edit state pages	Requires an editor	Lana Whiting		48	6	13%
Prepare pages for NGS demo	Edit selected tribe, reservation, and agency pages	Requires an editor	Karen Soliday		as assigned

Additional tasks will continue to be worked on over several sprints. Those tasks are reflected in the following chart.

Requirement	Task	Notes	Sign Up by inserting three tildes here	Comments	No. est.	No. Done	% Done	Task  Done	Requirement Done
Add content to tribal pages	Continue to add links to tribal websites		Gmajande	Not all tribes have a tribal website	400	258	64%
Add content to tribal pages	Continue to add brief timeline for each tribe		User:HealeyJE		400	76	19%
Add content to tribal pages	Continue to add brief histories for each tribe		Moody User:HealeyJE		400	45	11%
Add content to tribal pages	Continue to add reservations to each tribe		User:Jbparker	Not all tribes have a current reservation	400	140	35%
Add content to tribal pages	Continue to add descriptions of records for each tribe		User:HealeyJE		400	100	25%
Add content to tribal pages	Add links to additional references to history of the tribes				400	103	26%
Add remaining agency pages		Requires a content specialist	Jimmy B. Parker		26

Requirements Backlog

This is a list of possible requirements or features of this project. Before each sprint, each member of the team may vote on his/her top 5 requirement and/or task (the most important gets a 5, the least important gets a 1). After the vote we cut and paste requirements from this table to the Current Sprint table and assign to a contributor.

Requirement	Task	Priority score by Ritcheymt	Priority score by	Priority  score by	Priority score by	Priority score by	Priority score by	Priority Score (Total)
Prepare demo for NGS Conference	Edit records pages and clean up content
Prepare demo for NGS Conference	Choose well-developed pages to demo for NGS
Prepare demo for NGS Conference	Choose stubs to demo for NGS Conference to illustrate where community help is needed
Prepare demo for NGS Conference	Run tests of searches for all approaches to Indian rsearch
Prepare demo for NGS Conference

See Also

Indigenous Peoples of the United States Genealogy -- a portal for all things Native American that was created in Jan 2010.

Indigenous Peoples of North America

WikiProject -- Indians of North America -- Tasks

Templates

{{tl|Indians of North America-stub}} Stub notice for Indigenous Peoples of North America-related articles; placed at the bottom of article pages

{{Indians of North America-stub}}

Userboxes

This user is a participant in WikiProject Indians of North America.

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