Barriers like financial constraints and travel logistics prevent Indigenous people from accessing their cultural heritage objects held by national, state, and local institutions. This can be overcome using photogrammetry to create 3D models of cultural heritage objects and housing them in virtual museums accessible via Internet-capable devices. This pilot project, working with the White Earth Band of Ojibwe on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota, followed appropriate museology and communities of practice approaches to meet the concerns, desires, and budget of the tribal members to provide them unfettered access to cultural heritage objects. Because this approach presents cultural objects as 3D models, which can be 'manipulated' as if physically held, it offers visitors more meaningful engagement than they would have with single-dimension, restricted access museum displays. This project focusing on ten cultural heritage objects serves as a foundation on which similar digital museum projects initiated by Indigenous communities can build. / May 2017

Native nation building is a phenomenon largely neglected by mainstream political science. There are empirical and theoretical gaps in the study of political structures of Native nations. The empirical focus of this dissertation is on the rebuilding process of the White Earth Nation located in northwestern Minnesota. The objective is to investigate the long-term process of White Earth governance in order to get insights into the background of the present state of the White Earth institutional stalemate. I trace external and internal factors that influenced the formation, preservation, and transformation of the White Earth government established as part of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe under the Indian Reorganization Act provisions in 1936. To understand this process, it is necessary to include the historical context of the White Earth constitutionalism from 1913 to the present. I analyze some hitherto unknown archival materials using a flexible theoretical framework which I designed specifically for the purpose of studying the White Earth nation-building process. This case-specific framework eclectically uses a combination of theoretical approaches of Native American studies, genealogy, Vincent Pouliot's practice tracing, and new institutionalism. My findings suggest that the White Earth...