2024 Acquisitions Institute Keynote
Jonna C. Paden
What One Holds Sacred: Self-Determination in Libraries and Archives
Tribal librarians are knowledge keepers; tribal libraries are primary sources of cultural learning that support the community in a good way. Libraries belong to the people and tribal librarians are at the forefront of ensuring tribal language cultivation, celebrating the oral storytelling tradition, intergenerational learning, and ensuring literacy for all generations. Tribal archives preserve tribal history, ancestral knowledge, and the words and voices of community members for research and preservation of knowledge. The keynote will offer an understanding on how to better serve Native populations and build relationships with tribal librarians to encourage future collaboration.
Jonna C. Paden (Acoma/Laguna Pueblo) is the Archivist and Librarian at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center Library & Archives in Albuquerque, New Mexico where she has also been a Student and Community Intern, and part of the oral history project, “Journeys and Pathways: Contemporary Pueblo Women in Leadership, Service, and the Arts,” which collected the stories of 19 Pueblo women.
Jonna has also worked independently as a library and archives consultant and is the current archivist for the New Mexico Library Association (NMLA). She is the past Chair (1999-2023) of Native American Libraries (NAL), a Special Interest Group (SIG) of the NMLA. She is also an active member of the NMLA Archives & Archivists SIG, the Society for Southwest Archivists Diversity & Outreach Committee, and the ATALM Tribal Library Council. She is the Vice-President/President-elect of the American Indian Library Association and an Adjunct Professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts, a tribal college located on Pueblo homelands in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Paden is the co-director of the Bridging Knowledge scholarship program which supports 15 American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian students to earn a Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) degree with an Advanced Certificate in Management of Digital Assets and Services at the San José State University (SJSU) School of Information. As part of the Circle of Learning scholar cohort, Jonna earned her MLIS in Archival Studies and Records Management from SJSU in 2014. In July 2013, she traveled to Melbourne, Australia for an Archival study abroad class with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She has a B.U.S. focused on English (Professional Writing and Native American Literature), Linguistics (Native American Languages), and Native American Studies from the University of New Mexico.
You can find her library blog, “Indigenous Connections and Collections,” which aspires to connect readers to Pueblo and Indigenous resources, information and fun stuff, here: https://indianpueblo.org/category/indigenous-connections/