[citation needed] In an interview in later years, she cited both her health and an early interest in Native American culture as the motivations for her travels to the southwestern United States.

Over the next several years, her continued post graduate work at the conservatory was interspersed with employment as a music teacher in Kansas, Texas and Mexico, where she was often joined by family members.

[2] Berthold Laufer of Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History added his encouragement to that of Kidder who advised her to enroll at Columbia University.

Her master's thesis Coiled Basketry in British Columbia and Surrounding Region, written with Haeberlin and James A. Tiet, was published in 1928.

[7][2] The field work completed by Roberts in Hawaii during 1923 and 1924 produced the recording of 1,255 individual meles that are currently archived at the Bernice P. Bishop Museum in Honolulu.

[9] Specifics of this recording session,[10] part of a project to preserve the dying Shasta language, can be found in the Smithsonian National Anthropological Archive.

[11] Her initial apprenticeship with Alfred V. Kidder served not only to change her career choice, but also provided a path to exploring her ongoing interest in Native American culture.

She began doing field work among the Puebloan peoples in 1930, and an Alan Lomax 16mm video reel collection of American folk songs includes a Tewa dance that Roberts filmed in 1936 near San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico.

Clark Wissler and Jesse Walter Fewkes involved her with their work on Pawnee music, and it was for Edward Sapir that she transcribed the Diamond Jenness collection of Songs of the Nootka Indians of Western Vancouver Island.

While serving on that Board, Roberts co-wrote (with Doris Cousins) "A History of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra Celebrating its Seventh-Fifth Season".

In recent years, the Symphony has performed with William Boughton, Cirque Mechanics, Kurt Elling, Jimmy Green, Alasdair Neale, Dianne Reeves, Amir ElSaffar's Rivers of Sound, and Tiempo Libre in concerts celebrating Helen Robert's musical legacy in the New Haven community.