Oliver Wendell Holmes Travel Award: Suanmuanlian Tonsing

Suanmuanlian Tonsing, who is completing doctoral studies in the school of information at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, is the 2025 recipient of the Oliver Wendell Holmes Travel Award from the Society of American Archivists (SAA). The award enables international archivists who are training or studying in the United States or Canada to augment their experience by attending the SAA Annual Meeting.

As a member of a minority Indigenous tribe known as the Paite Zomi tribe of the Zo ancestry in the highlands of Manipur, India, Tonsing has focused his studies on how colonial archival records in social media have created harm for non-dominant Indigenous peoples. His dissertation explores how dominant Indigenous groups use archival materials in social media spaces to create and support false narratives aimed at discrediting other Indigenous groups, particularly in the context of state-sponsored ethnic violence against the Zomi and Kuki communities. As Dr. Ricky Punzalan, a member of Tonsing’s PhD committee, states, “His interest in examining the mobilization of archival records in digital spaces in the context of state-sponsored ethnic violence is an important contribution to his own Indigenous community as well as in the field of archival studies.”

Tonsing has published and presented his research extensively in India, the US, Canada, and the UK. Much of his impact is shown by his engagement with Indigenous peoples in India and Canada. Through workshops and healing circles coordinated in collaboration with Zo(mi) Academia (an organization co-founded by Tonsing and other Zomi scholars), he has helped students reconnect with their Indigenous roots and introduced Indigenous ethnographic tools to support them in documenting their experiences and observations. He has also mentored Indigenous students in Canada through the Indigenous Friends Association (IFA). Tonsing’s future goals include decolonizing archival misrepresentations of the Zomi people and advancing digital justice for Zomi communities and other socio-politically marginalized Indigenous groups. Support from the Oliver Wendell Holmes Travel Award to attend the 2025 SAA Annual Meeting will allow Tonsing to “shape the direction of my PhD dissertation…I particularly look forward to meeting the leadership and members of the Native American Archives Section and the Archival Repatriation Committee, whose work and advocacy are relevant to my research.”