Who We Are
The Manitos Digital Archive is an initiative of the Manitos Community Memory Project, a multi-organizational collaborative effort to collect, preserve, and share materials related to Manito history and cultural heritage. The initiative is spearheaded by a consortium of rural libraries, cultural centers and nonprofit organizations, individual Manito family and community historians, educators, cultural heritage professionals, and institutional affiliates.
A distributed cultural memory project
Instead of operating as a single central archive, the Manitos Digital Archive supports a network of cultural organizations, historical societies, community groups, and individuals who steward their own history and contribute materials, context, and expertise to the project.
This collaborative model allows for multiple ways of remembering and multiple voices in how stories are preserved, described, and shared.
Our values
- Community stewardship — history belongs to the people who lived it.
- Cultural continuity — connecting generations through shared memory.
- Access — making materials available to communities and researchers.
- Respect — honoring the language, traditions, and lived experience of Manito families.
A shared regional heritage
Manito history spans villages, migrations, and generations. Whether rooted in the mountains of northern New Mexico, the acequia communities of southern Colorado, or carried along migration routes into cities and new regions, these stories speak to a distinctive regional identity that continues into the present — wherever Manitos live today.
Partners and collaborators
The Manitos Communiuty Memory Project works alongside museums, libraries, cultural centers, educators, individuals, and families who help collect, describe, and contextualize materials.
Explore our current partner sites: Participating Partners.
Contribute to the archive
We welcome contributions of stories, photographs, documents, and knowledge from across the Manito diaspora.
Learn how to share materials or stories: How to Contribute.