Restrictions to Access

This collection contains additional materials that are not available for immediate or same day access. Select photographs and ephemera are currently not available to researchers. For information about access to these materials, contact Research and Instructional Services staff at wilsonlibrary@unc.edu. Please be advised that preparing unprocessed materials for access can be a lengthy process.

Access to audio materials may require production of listening copies.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Malinda Maynor Lowery Collection #70100, Southern Folklife Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received from Malinda Maynor Lowery in June 2021 (Acc. 20210625.1).

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Processed by: Dawne Howard Lucas and Anne Wells, July 2021

Encoded by: Dawne Howard Lucas and Anne Wells, July 2021

Updated by: Anne Wells, September 2021; Patrick Cullom, October 2021

Since August 2017, we have added ethnic and racial identities for individuals and families represented in collections. To determine identity, we rely on self-identification; other information supplied to the repository by collection creators or sources; public records, press accounts, and secondary sources; and contextual information in the collection materials. Omissions of ethnic and racial identities in finding aids created or updated after August 2017 are an indication of insufficient information to make an educated guess or an individual's preference for identity information to be excluded from description. When we have misidentified, please let us know at wilsonlibrary@unc.edu.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Church music--North Carolina.
• Documentary films.
• Gospel music--North Carolina.
• Hopi Indians--Religion.
• Indian women--Ethnic identity.
• Indigenous peoples of North America--Land tenure.
• Indigenous peoples of North America--Religion.
• Lakota Indians--Religion.
• Lowery, Malinda Maynor.
• Lowery, Willie French.
• Lumbee Indians--Ethnic identity.
• Lumbee Indians--Food.
• Lumbee Indians--Music.
• Lumbee Indians--Religion.
• Lumbee Indians--Social life and customs.
• Sacred Land Film Project.
• Sacred space--United States.
• Wintu Indians--Religion.

Historian and documentary film producer Malinda Maynor Lowery, a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, was born in Robeson County, N.C., and raised in Durham, N.C. She earned a bachelor's degree in history, cum laude, from Harvard University, a master's degree in documentary film and video production from Stanford University, a master's degree and Ph.D. in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has served as a lecturer in the Department of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University, an assistant professor in the Department of History at Harvard University, an assistant and associate professor in the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, director of the Southern Oral History Program and the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and coordinator of the Lumbee River Fund. In 2021, Lowery was named the second Cahoon Family Professor in American History in Emory College of Arts and Sciences, Emory University.

Lowery has focused much of her career on questions pertaining to Native culture, identity and migration. Films on these topics include: In the Light of Reverence (broadcast on PBS in 2001), and two short films, Real Indian (1996), and Sounds of Faith (1997), both of which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Books on these topics include The Lumbee Indians: An American Struggle and Lumbee Indians in the Jim Crow South: Race, Identity, and the Making of a Nation, both published by UNC Press. She also writes and teaches on other topics, including Southern history, religion, music, and foodways. Other documentary film projects include co-producing the Markay Media productions Private Violence, A Chef's Life, and Road to Race Day.

The collection contains papers, ephemera, photographs, and audiovisual materials related to documentary film projects by Malinda Maynor Lowery, a historian, documentary film producer, and member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. Materials relate to documentary productions completed while Lowery was a student at Harvard University and Stanford University, as well as the films Real Indian (1996), Sounds of Faith (1997), and In the Light of Reverence (2001).

Papers include tape logs, release forms, transcripts, press kits, and other materials related to the production and distribution of select documentary projects produced, directed, edited, or co-produced by Lowery. Audiovisual materials, which make up the bulk of the collection, consist mostly of production elements of Real Indian (1996), Sounds of Faith (1997), and various student projects by Lowery, including original picture and sound elements, workprints, edited masters, and video viewing copies. Also included is a DVD copy of In the Light of Reverence (2001). The collection also contains photographs and audio recordings related to Malinda Maynor Lowery's husband, Willie French Lowery (1944-2012), a Lumbee musician, educator, and activist from Robeson County, N.C., including a self-released cassette by Dion Oxendine that Willie French Lowery produced and recorded. Formats found in the collection include: 16mm motion picture film, videotapes (Betacam SP, Hi-8, and VHS), digital audio tape (DAT), audiocassettes, 1/4" open reel audio, transparencies, 35mm photographic slides, floppy discs, a watercolor picture, and ephemera relating to the films' production.

The 7-minute 16mm film Real Indian (1996) produced, directed and edited by Lowery is described as a "lighthearted, very personal look at the meaning of cultural identity," based on Lowery's experience of not fitting into society's stereotypes for Native Americans, imposed by both whites and other Indians. The film was screened at the Sundance Film Festival, the Women in the Director’s Chair Film Festival, the American Indian Film Festival, and the Lumbee Film Festival. It received awards for Best Short Film at the South by Southwest Film Festival, and Best Indian-Produced Short Documentary at the Red Earth Film Festival.

The 14-minute video documentary Sounds of Faith (1997), also produced, directed, and edited by Lowery, is about Lumbee Indian music, religion, and family, and features Baptist Minister Rev. Michael Cummings, Attorney-at-law Jody Cummings, and the Foy and Bloss Cummings family. The film was screened at the Sundance Film Festival, the Smithsonian Institution, the New York Native American Film Festival, and the American Indian Film Festival.

Malinda Maynor Lowery co-produced the documentary film In the Light of Reverence (2001), which was part of the Earth Island Institute's Sacred Land Film Project. The film, which was produced and directed by Christopher McLeod, accounts of the struggles of the Lakota in the Black Hills, the Hopi Tribe of Arizona and the Wintu in California to protect their sacred sites. The film won the Henry Hampton Award for Social Change Documentary, the Best Documentary Feature at the American Indian Film Festival, the Eagle Award at the Taos Talking Picture Film Festival, the CINE Golden Eagle, and the Jury Award from MountainFilm.

• Audiocassettes (FS-70100/1-9)
• Audiotapes (FT-70100/1-8)
• Digital Audio Tapes (DAT-70100/1-9)
• Digital Video Disc (DVD-70100/1)
• Films (F-70100/1-50)
• Photographs (PF-70100/1-3)
• Videotapes (VT-70100/1-65)