The Archive is the fruit of an ongoing collaboration between the University of California, Davis Middle East/South Asia Studies Program and the Punjabi and Sikh community in northern California. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the support and encouragement that I have been given over the past year by hundreds of community members, archivists, colleagues, friends, and family. I am grateful to the partnership with Yuba City’s Punjabi American Heritage Society for their ongoing support. I would like to give my profound appreciation to the numerous families who trusted me to preserve and narrate their family histories.
I am especially indebted to the Everest family, particularly Professor Hari Singh Everest’s son, Dr. Paramjit Everest, for his trust and for sharing his father’s extraordinary collection of writings, photographs, interviews, and other valuable historical materials with me. I also want to thank Harpreet Everest for narrating his grandfather’s diaries for the film. Through the Archive, Hari Singh Everest’s intelligence, passion for social justice, and sense of humor will continue to engage and inspire scholars, the public, and students far into the future.
Funders
I would like to acknowledge the generous financial support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Indian Ocean Worlds Initiative; Middle East/South Asia Studies, UC Davis; College of Letters & Science, UC Davis; and, College of Agricultural & Environmental Sciences, UC Davis.
Archives
I wish to thank the individuals, archives, and university libraries that granted permission to include their materials in the Archive, including the Punjabi American Heritage Society; Mrs Manjeet Sibia, owner of the Ted Sibia Sikh Pioneers Collection; Sara Gunasekara at Special Collections, Library, University of California, Davis; California State Library, Sacramento; Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; Jessica Hougen at the Community Memorial Museum of Sutter County; Southern Oregon Historical Society; Yuba City Unified School District; Stockton Sikh Temple; Yuba City Sikh Temple; West Sacramento Sikh Temple; and the Sacramento Valley Charter School. I appreciate the dozens of individuals and families who have granted me permission to exhibit their photographs.
ARCHIVE TEAM
Curator and Assistant Professor: Nicole Ranganath
Site Designer: Somaia Bharat Vishvanathan, Southern Design, Bangalore, India
Site Re-Designer (2024): Somaia Dorzadeh, Adjunct Faculty and Designer/Scholar/Archivist, Virginia Commonwealth University Qatar, Doha, Qatar (@denofdor).
Cinematographer and Editor: Samuel Mark Anderson
Site Developers: Reeta Asmai, Harjeet Mann, and Gurjot Singh.
Questions or comments? Please write to Dr. Nicole Ranganath at nranganath@ucdavis.edu.