From the Archives: Leonda Hardison
This story begins a few years ago when Narragansett Tribal Elder Dawn Dove donated her own personal signed copy of a vinyl record by a recording artist Leonda entitled, Woman in the Sun (1968). A wonderful donation for the collection-not only because the archive does not have very many vinyl records but it is also signed by the artist, which as something an archivist who is trying to build a archive here at the Tomaquag made this record unique and immediately worth preserving. In this installment, we’ll see how a worn vinyl record in the archives led us to discover the music of Leonda Hardison and her performance at the dedication of the “New Tomaquag Indian Memorial Museum” in 1972.