Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians

The Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians will develop a genealogical database for tribal members and researchers to understand kinship connections and to provide access to software to aid in the discovery of family lineage. The tribe will hire a curator/archivist with experience in genealogy research, who will be principally responsible for working with other members of the Eyaawing Museum and Cultural Center staff to implement the two-year project activities. Staff will enroll in five online classes, while learning the genealogy software that will be purchased for the project. Upon completion of the classes, project staff will employ a variety of methods to collect information on tribal member families to discover genealogy trees in the local community. Staff will then input the data into the genealogy software, while researching online archival documents. The effectiveness and accuracy of the database will be measured through surveys of initial users.