Indigenous Librarianship

Featured Articles

Littletree, Sandra and Cheryl Metoyer. 2015. “Knowledge Organization from an Indigenous Perspective: The Mashantucket Pequot Thesaurus of American Indian Terminology Project. Cataloging and Classification Quarterly, 53: 5-6, 640-657
Native Americans create, preserve, and organize knowledge within the context of community, thereby ensuring the inclusion of Native American philosophies. Historically, mainstream cataloging and classification systems have not adequately represented this knowledge. The Mashantucket Pequot Thesaurus of American Indian Terminology was designed to incorporate an Indigenous perspective into mainstream controlled vocabularies. Using story as pedagogy, this article examines the conceptual foundations, theoretical framework, and application of the Thesaurus to a museum setting.
Duarte, Marisa Elena, and Miranda Belarde-Lewis. 2015. “Imagining: Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies.” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 53 (5-6): 677–702
For at least half a century, catalogers have struggled with how to catalog and classify Native American and Indigenous peoples materials in library, archive, and museum collections. Understanding how colonialism works can help those in the field of knowledge organization appreciate the power dynamics embedded in the marginalization of Native American and Indigenous peoples materials through standardization, misnaming, and other practices. The decolonizing methodology of imagining provides one way that knowledge organization practitioners and theorists can acknowledge and discern the possibilities of Indigenous community-based approaches to the development of alternative information structures.
Doyle, A. M., Lawson, K., & Dupont, S. 2015. Indigenization of Knowledge Organization at the X̱wi7x̱wa Library. Journal of Library & Information Studies, 13(2), 107-134. doi:10.6182/jlis.2015.13(2).107
This paper examines the Indigenization of knowledge organization within library and information studies through conceptual analysis and a descriptive case study of an Aboriginal academic library, the X̱wi7x̱wa Library at the University of British Columbia, Canada. It begin by locating the library in place and time, review its historical development in the context of Indigenous education in Canada and describe the evolution of its unique Indigenous classification scheme and related Indigenous subject headings.
Lee, D. 2011. "Indigenous Knowledge Organization: A study of concepts, terminology, structure and (mostly) Indigenous voices" Partnership: The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research, 6(1).
Research findings included preferred changes in terminology from Library of Congress subject headings (which were seen to be outdated and inappropriate) but there was no resounding consensus on a “one-size fits all” terminology for thesauri terminology. However, this was not seen to be problematic given the diverse range of participants who took part in the survey. Respondents also commented on a survey question inquiring about the use of the “Medicine Wheel” concept as a way to organize Aboriginal-related materials, as well as other possible structures that might prove more culturally relevant for organizing these materials.

Summon

TIP: Limit your results to journal articles by selecting Content Type: Journal Article (under "Refine Your Search" on the left-hand side of the screen). You can also filter by publication date, academic discipline, and language; limit your result to peer reviewed publications; and exclude certain formats (e.g. newspapers) from your results.

TIP: Use quotation marks to search for a phrase (e.g. "First Nations"). Use an asterisk to truncate a term to search for words with the same stem (e.g. Curric* retrieves Curriculum, Curricula, Curricular, etc.).

Why Databases?

Searching within databases can be more time consuming than using Summon, but there are advantages to this research strategy:

Databases are usually limited by academic discipline, which means you will retrieve fewer results but they may be more relevant.
Databases are highly structured, which means you can perform complex searches using controlled vocabulary.

The following databases are useful for finding articles related to this topic. For a more comprehensive list, see the Articles & Databases page of our First Nations and Indigenous Studies research guide.

Each database may have their own way and limitations of searching within the database. Some may use "And," "Or," quotation marks and other search strategies listed on the books & media page, but some may not. If you are not getting the results you expected within a database, make sure the search is worded the way the database works.

Selected Databases

Academic Search Complete
Indexes over 10,000 journals, with many full-text articles.
Subject Terms: First Nations, Métis, Inuit, Native Americans, Aboriginal Australians, Indigenous peoples, names of specific nations.
Some articles have no Subject Terms assigned, so also try full-text searches.
Informit Indigenous Collection
Collection includes journals, reports and monographs from Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Canada, the US and the Pacific.
JSTOR Collection
Full-text searching of hundreds of journal titles in the sciences, humanities, social sciences, business, and more. Use advanced search or filters to narrow your results.
Search keywords: First Nations, Native American, Indigenous, Aboriginal, Métis, Inuit.
Project Muse
Full-text collection of over 400 humanities and social sciences journals. Use filters to narrow your results.
Search keywords: First Nations, Native American, Indigenous, Aboriginal, Métis, Inuit.
ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center)
Over 980 education journals. Covers 1969 to the present, most post-1993 articles have full text available. First Nations titles include Winds of Change, American Indian Higher Education, Tribal College, Cultural Survival Quarterly, and Wicazo Sa.
Search terms: Canada Natives (for Canadian content), Alaska Natives, American Indians, Eskimos and Indigenous populations. Use the Thesaurus for more terms and more precise terms.
MLA International Bibliography
Indexes over 4,000 journals and series (1926 - present) with some First Nations language and literature coverage. Includes journals such as, Studies in American Indian Literature; North Dakota Quarterly; American Indian Culture & Research; Canadian Journal of Native Studies. Search terms: folk-literature, folk narrative, oral history or search by author name: Sherman Alexie, Joy Harjo, Gerald Vizenor, Lee Maracle, Thomas King, etc.