Bruce Peel Special Collections

The Indigenous Photograph Collection in Bruce Peel Special Collections profiles the lives of Indigenous peoples living in Western Canada in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is one of the many print collections in the Peel library with photographs of Indigenous peoples, including the Gregory Javitch Collection of books about Indigenous peoples (digitized, in part, for Gale’s Indigenous Peoples: North America database), the Miriam Green Ellis Archive, the Prairie Ephemera Collection, and, partially available digitally through Peel's Prairie Provinces database: the Prairie Postcard Collection and the Magee Photograph Collection. Researchers looking for such materials can search the University of Alberta library catalogue by subject or by collection and can take advantage of online finding aids and partially-digitized collections. The Indigenous Photograph Collection was featured in an award-winning exhibition and catalogue: Ancestors: Indigenous Peoples of Western Canada in Historic Photographs (2022-2023). Today, hundreds of photographs from this collection can be viewed online through the Internet Archive. A significant proportion of the photographs in this collection are part of the Prairie Roots Collection, supported by the Prairie Roots Endowment Fund (gift of Ralph and Gay Young).

Collection Formats: 19th Century, 20th Century, Photographs, Postcards -- click to see other collections with this format