Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation

This grant will assist in safely and efficiently housing approximately 600 ethnographic objects and 5,000 lithics in the Vert Collection located at the Tamastslikt Cultural Institute.  Current shelving will be retrofitted to allow for secure storage of artifacts contaminated with arsenic, mercury, and lead, which were common ingredients in pesticides used to treat artifacts from the late 1800s to the 1960s.   Project staff members will attend courses to learn proper handling techniques of contaminated collections as well as collections management principles to assist with the development of policies and procedures to properly manage contaminated collections.