The county of Lancaster, South Carolina, sits within the lands once held by the Catawba Indian Nation; the current Catawba Reservation lies about 15 miles from the campus of USC Lancaster.  With strong geographical and historical ties to the Catawba, USC Lancaster has begun to develop curricular and public programs focused on Native American art and culture, with a special emphasis on the Catawba and other Native communities in South Carolina. 

The scholarly foundation of this program is the Thomas J. Blumer Catawba Research Collection, which contains over 150 hours of interviews with Catawba potters and other tradition bearers, as well as hundreds of photos related to Catawba pottery, history, and culture. In 2003, Dr. Tom Blumer donated an extensive collection of papers, archives, and artifacts, all dealing with the Catawba Indians, to Medford Library of USC Lancaster. The T.J. Blumer Catawba Research Collection contains a wide variety of materials created and collected by the donor over a 40-year period as he conducted his research on the Catawba and other Native American peoples, with a focus on the pottery of the Catawba Indians. These materials form the single largest documentary collection of materials about the Catawba in existence. The collection also provides the best existing documentation on the life, work, techniques, and products of the Catawba potters, artists who have maintained a continuous tradition stretching back hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

The USCL Native American Studies Program has begun to develop curricula focused on Native American cultural traditions.  USCL faculty members have taught courses in American Indian literature and culture on the Lancaster campus, and they have offered classes in Native American archaeology, folklore, anthropology, and oral traditions to students around the state through the USC Palmetto Programs two-way video system.  Plans are underway to offer additional Native American literature courses, a course in Native American language, and additional courses taught through the Palmetto Programs system.

The NAS Program also sponsors public events highlighting the traditions of South Carolina’s Native peoples.  Each April USCL hosts Native American Studies Week, a series of events celebrating local Native American history and culture.  Through the efforts of the NAS Program, USCL has become the new home of the Catawba Nation’s annual Yap Ye Iswa (“Day of the Catawba”) Festival, a celebration of Catawba art, music, and dance.

USCL’s Native American Studies Program holds a growing collection of Native American art, particularly the Phillip Wingard Catawba pottery collection and USCL’s own collection of Catawba pottery and Native artifacts acquired with support from the Duke Energy Foundation.

USCL’s Native American Studies Program continues to plan additional public events, such as future Native American Studies Weeks, an exhibit funded by the National Endowment for the Arts focused on Catawba potter and National Heritage Fellow Georgia Harris, a roundtable discussion among scholars on Cofitachiqui, and additional performances and demonstrations by Native American artists.