Welcome to the WHIRL Project!
Painting by Rafael Mena.
The Western Hemisphere Indigenous Reference Library (WHIRL) project is focused on the digitization, preservation, and presentation of indigenous manuscripts from what is now called the America's and Eastern Polynesia. In its current rendition the project's area of interest is limited to manuscripts with literary traditions that predate local Afro-Eurasian contact but not produced after 1860. This project was motivated by the existence of similar archives for other historical periods and languages, which further highlight a gap in the representation of indigenous literary traditions. The current fractured approach to accessing these texts makes scholarship on the subject needlessly difficult.
This project takes a broad and inclusive definition of what constitutes "writing" similar to what is presented by Mikulska & Offner et al. 2019. As such this project will focus on many literary systems that may not often be included in that category prefering to use the terminology of "Graphic Communication Systems" wherever possible. The WHIRL project intends to roll out in "phases" with each phase of the archive presenting different bodies of literary work. Currently the WHIRL archive is in phase one and will contain texts primarily from Central and South America.