Goal 1: Empower Native the population of Grand Rapids to know who they are, where they have been, and where they are going, this is important so that Native Americans raised in urban areas understand the benefits of their experience

      Objectives are to collect oral histories/stories to connect the generations, to identify existing primary resources, documents etc. and to promote the access to those materials, and finally to demonstrate cultural/tribal continuities and resiliency.  

Goal 2: Educate non-Natives about native experience in Michigan, contemporary as well as historical

      Objectives are to develop educational materials including, presentations at scholarly conferences, scholarly article(s) and/or book chapters, a film, and a book as it falls within our 5 year plan.    We will develop a community-service and/or community engaged learning course, advocate for the development of a program, minor or major in Native American Studies here at GVSU, we will host a conference focusing on the urban native experience, teaching about the urban Native American experience and will educate the community about how to preserve their own history.

Goal 3: Preserve documentation and make these resources accessible to the communities that generated them, as well as to educators, students, and future generations

     Objectives will be to establish and model best practices for informed consent and preservation/access, to create an annotated guide to local resources related to the urban Native experience, to find an institution to host the digital files.  We will also host a university community event highlighting special archival pieces that have not been seen for a long time and will work with smaller community repositories to help develop greater capacity within their institutions

Goal 4: Fostering community between the university and the urban Native population

     Objectives are to carefully document project process and make these materials publicly accessible, to facilitate a needs assessment in the GR Native American community as the basis for a community-based service project defined by a need in the Native American community and to secure storage of materials gathered.