Researching Indigenous Topics

at the Library*

I acknowledge that Concordia University, Concordia University Library, and my home, are all located in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal, on the unceded lands of the Kanien’kehá:ka, a founding nation of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.

TERRITORIAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT - Part 1 

Tiohtiá:ke has long served as both a gathering place and a site of meeting and exchange amongst Indigenous peoples, including between the Haudenosaunee and Algonquin Anishinabeg nations. Today I am collaborating with Chloe Belair-Morin, who is working  from home in Gatineau, Québec, located on the unceded lands of the Algonquin Anishinabeg nation.  

TERRITORIAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT - Part 2 

Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal it is home to a diverse population of Indigenous and other peoples, and to many vital and vibrant Indigenous-led organizations that are worth celebrating and supporting. 

• visit Native-land.ca to find out whom YOU could be acknowledging
   
• see the full Concordia Territorial Acknowledgement document & guide
   
• register for GPTK766 - Territorial Land Acknowledgements: What does it mean?  (new dates in Fall 2021)
   
• see our additional resources slides.

To learn more:

TERRITORIAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT - Part 3 

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Who we are.

Who we are.

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see also: additional resources

What do YOU hope to look at?
Would you like to contribute?

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The colonial context of libraries

see also GPLL 245 2019 slides - M. Lake 

Settler Colonialism

What is now called Canada operates under settler colonialism.  "Different from other forms of colonialism in that settlers come with the intention of making a new home on the land, a homemaking that insists on settler sovereignty over all things in their new domain.  In order for the settlers to make a place their home, they must destroy and disappear the Indigenous peoples that live there... Settler colonialism is a structure and not an event."

It is an ideological structure that trickles down into the governing bodies, systems, and institutions that we interact with regularly.

 Tuck, E. & Yang, K.W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), 5-6. https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/18630/15554

The Doctrine of Discovery  emanates from formal statements from the Pope originating in the 1400s. These were used to legally and morally justify colonial dispossession of sovereign Indigenous Nations, including First Nations in what is now Canada. It operated in conjunction with Terra Nullius, a legal concept claiming that "no one" owned the land prior to European assertion of sovereignty.

The Doctrine of Discovery and Terra Nullius

What is now called Canada was founded upon the:

 Assembly of First Nations. (2018). Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery.

In the 19th century, despite the diversity of existing experiences and relationships between First Peoples and settlers across the country, the Canadian Confederation established a very different relationship... disregarding the interests and treaty rights of First Peoples and "uniformly making them legal wards of the state."

This was achieved through the Indian Act in 1876. In this law the government established its vision of future Canada-First Nations relations: an aggressive colonizing project of assimilation… of all First Nations.

The Indian act served to suppress and obliterate Indigenous cultures by policing who obtained "status" and by banning cultural practices like the Potlatch and Sun Dance.

Assimilation: Confederation, Indian Act...

"Following the organization of the Department of Indian Affairs and the passage of the first Indian Act in 1876, the attention of the federal government became focused on the education of the Indian students."  .

Milloy, John. (2008). Indian Act Colonialism: A Century of Dishonour, 1869-1969. Research Paper for the National Centre for First Nations Governance.  Nishnawbe Aski Nation. (2019). History of Residential Schools: The Davin Report, 1879. Healing the Generations Residential School Curriculum. 

 Assimilation:  ...Residential Schools, State Care

Residential Schools: 1831-1996. "From the point of view of the Government, the major purpose of  these schools was to use education and Christianity as vehicles to force the assimilation of Indigenous people.  Under this system children would be removed from parental control and cultural influences. Only in this way could the children be de-socialized from their culture and then re-socialized in a new culture – that of the dominant society."

State Care: ongoing today. "The 2016 Census revealed that First Nations, Inuit and Métis children represented only 7.7% of all children under the age of 15 in Canada but accounted for 52.2% of children in foster care....The government acknowledged that children were being removed from their families and communities at disproportionate rates due to factors such as poverty, intergenerational trauma and culturally biased child welfare practices."

Frances Rosner, BarTalk, Feb. 2020

History of Residential Schools: The Government View. 

“While Indigenous people have necessarily (and effectively) engaged with Western institutions, it is important to remember that this necessity came about largely due to a need to respond to colonial impositions. Colonizers wanted Indigenous lands, and ultimately found imposing institutions to be a most effective way of stealing that land.”

Universities & libraries as colonial institutions

 Tuck, E. & Yang, K.W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), 5-6. https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/18630/15554

“The library is always an ideological structure. It’s not just what goes into the library that matters, but how it’s organized and under which norms.”

Daniel Heath Justice, Ph.D, ACRL Choice Webinar: Indigenous Literatures, social justice and the decolonial library

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Libraries as ideological structure

 Terminology & Classification

see also GPLL 245 2019 slides - M. Lake 

Classification & Terminology  

BRAIDING SWEETGRASS: INDIGENOUS WISDOM, SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE AND THE TEACHINGS OF PLANTS

Classification: browse the book shelves

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Terminology: what about the subjects?

Terminology

In the most common university library classification system, Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), the main subject heading for material about Indigenous peoples in Canada and the United States is “Indians of North America”.
 

The term Indigenous is still new in these systems.
 

Though relevant and correct, terms for nations such as the Kanien’kehá:ka or confederacies such as the Haudenosaunee are far less prevalent in our Sofia Discovery tool than terms such as Mohawk or Iroquois.

see also the names & terminology section further in these slides

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Terminology: what about the subjects?

Terminology 

Until recently, the subject heading “Residential School” was less common than subject headings such as:

•  “Off-reservation boarding schools - Canada”
•  “Indians of North America - Education”

Researching Indigenous genocide poses some difficulties, as standard library subject headings related to genocide are not often employed.  These have been the commonly-used headings:

Indians of North America, Treatment of

Violence against

Crimes against

Assimilation

Government relations

Relocation

Education

Wars

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Strategies & Resources for Researching Indigenous Topics

ADDRESSING THE DIFFICULTIES

Strategies & Resources:

1. Adjust your search terms
    

2. use subject-specific databases and tools
    

3. find and follow Indigenous authors, publishers & organizations
    

4. widen your searches and follow "cited by" trails for important works by Indigenous authors in tools like Google scholar
    

5. Return to #1 or  #2 and start over again....

There is a tension between finding keywords and subjects that will result in the most comprehensive search and using respectful and appropriate terminology.  

 Terminology, classification  and search terms:

search terms

• sometimes you will have to include inappropriate or white-settler terms when searching in library databases and search tools*. -- See for example this ready-made search strategy for topics related to residential schools.  
   
• but be sure to also learn and include the relevant and specific names or terms related to the Indigenous/First Peoples topics you are researching. See for instance this short guide to names and terminology in the context of Turtle Island / North America.

Strategies & Resources:

1. Adjust your search terms
   
   

2. use subject-specific databases and tools
   
   

3. find and follow Indigenous authors, publishers & organizations
   
   

4. widen your searches and follow "cited by" trails for important works by Indigenous authors in tools like Google scholar
   
   

5. Return to #1 or  #2 and start over again....

2. Subject-specific databases & tools

OR:

do you want to

TRY IT OUT FOR YOURSELF?

EXAMPLES of specialized, subject-specific databases & portals for Indigenous topics

• Indigenous Studies Portal: (iPortal) - articles, e-books, theses, government publications, videos, oral histories, and digitized archival documents and photographs.
   
• Yellowhead Institute & its Community Resource Library - reports, factsheets, infographics and more from a First Nation-led research center based in the Faculty of Arts at Ryerson University.
   
• Autochtonia - books, articles, & theses on the First Peoples of Quebec (French interface)
   
•  Northern and Arctic Studies Portal (Atiku) - Intended for researchers and students as well as members of northern Indigenous communities, public and private sector stakeholders of all backgrounds.

EXAMPLES of standard /commercial library databases which might be useful for Indigenous topics

• Bibliography of Native North Americans 
• American History & Life
• ProQuest Combined Canadian
• SocINDEX and Anthropology Plus

• Academic Search Complete
• Google Scholar

Multidisciplinary:

Subject/discipline specific:

EXAMPLE of a search in a specialized subject-specific source

subject-specific source: browse by topic

Strategies & Resources:

1. Adjust your search terms
   
   

2. use subject-specific databases and tools
   
   

3. find and follow Indigenous authors, publishers & organizations
   
   

4. widen your searches and follow "cited by" trails for important works by Indigenous authors in tools like Google scholar
   
   

5. Return to #1 or  #2 and start over again....

3. Find and follow Indigenous
authors, publishers & organizations

 Indigenous authors:

• Concordia's Indigenous faculty 
   
• Concordia's Indigenous Directions: Research & Community-based projects
   
• Concordia Library's Indigenous authors in the spotlight
  -see for instance: research methods; futurisms; poetry; feminisms
   

watch for affiliations and acknowledgements in the articles you find

Indigenous publishers/organizations/institutes

Publishers:

• UBC's list of Indigenous Publishers, Distributors & News Media 
• UofT's list of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Publishers and Distributors

Organizations and institutes - EXAMPLES:

• The Yellowhead Institute 
• Shekon Neetchie: An Indigenous History Site -- see their history bibliography
• The Montreal Indigenous Community Network -- see their resources

.....do YOU have tips to offer?

Strategies & Resources:

1. Adjust your search terms
   
   

2. use subject-specific databases and tools
   
   

3. find and follow Indigenous authors, publishers & organizations
   
   

4. widen your searches and follow "cited by" trails for important works by Indigenous authors in tools like Google scholar
   
   

5. Return to #1 or  #2 and start over again....

4. Widen your searches and follow "Cited by" trails in tools like

Google Scholar

sample "cited by" search in Google scholar

GPLL 245 2019 slides - M. Lake 

....sample "cited by" search -- Part II

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Research with Indigenous communities: ethical guidelines

see also GPLL 245 2019 slides - M. Lake 

[Colonial] Academic Culture

In universities, there has been an academic culture where researchers assume that they own the data that they collect and that they hold all intellectual property rights to the data.

A competitive culture of academic research often prevents collaborative thinking and attribution of research credit to the subjects of their research.

Assertions of  research subjects' control or ownership over research data can lead to accusations of stifling research or preventing 'unbiased' reporting of research results.

Heather Igloliorte, Inuk scholar, holder of the Concordia University Research Chair in Circumpolar Arts and Special Advisor to the Provost on Advancing Indigenous Knowledges

The care component: respect & giving

Indigenous peoples as subjects of research

Indigenous peoples as subjects of research

"Researched to death"

GPLL 245 2019 slides - M. Lake 

Indigenous peoples as subjects of research

Medical Experiments

In the 1940s, there were many research questions related to human requirements for vitamins. Malnourished Indigenous people became viewed as possible means of testing these theories.

Beginning in 1942, Canadian government researchers performed hunger experiments on at least 1300 indigenous children.

Indigenous peoples as subjects of research

Nuu-chah-nulth blood 

Dr. Richard Ward, at UBC, took 883 vials of blood between 1982 and 1985, from the Nu-chah-nulth peoples for a $330,000 Health Canada-funded study to look for predisposition to arthritis. Researchers found no genetic markers and shelved the study.

When Ward died in 2004, the blood was returned to UBC after lobbying by the Nu-chah-nulth community, which also set up a Research Ethics Committee.

Ward left UBC.  At Oxford University, beginning in 1996 he used the blood, and loaned it to other researchers, for a variety of studies, with hundreds of academic papers being produced. The community was never given any results. Though the original consent form only outlined a study about rheumatic disease, all the secondary research was about lineage and anthropology.

Wiwchar, David. (Dec. 16 2004) "Nuu- chah -nulth blood returns to west coast". Ha-Shi1thSa Newspaper.

.....practices such as these have led to: 

• related to resources and environments (land, geology, water)
   
• about demographics and service use (legal, social, health, educational)
   
• produced BY Indigenous communities (stories, archives, traditions).

[From our Research Data Management guide]

Research with Indigenous Communities:

The guidelines or protocols to follow in terms of data collection, management and more will depend on the communities  with whom you are working

[From our Research Data Management guide]

Research with Indigenous Communities:

Indigenous peoples as subjects of research

First Nations in Quebec and Labrador's Research Protocol (2014)

A collective tool for community chiefs and managers who are invited to take part in research projects.  Can be used as a guide by not only First Nations, communities and regional organizations, but also indirectly by the scientific community, in order to establish rules for research activities performed with First Nations or on their territory.

Institut nordique du Quebec - First Peoples Working Group:  Research Guidelines

Research with Indigenous Communities in Quebec:

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Indigenous Methodologies

• Indigenous authors in the spotlight, Knowledges and research methods:
  Carousel & Zotero bibliography
   
• Indigenous Educational Resources for Faculty guide:
  Knowledges, methods & ethics

 Indigenous methodologies

 “As outsiders to Indigenous communities and identities, non-Indigenous researchers are not equipped to ground themselves in Indigenous traditions or positions.  While non-Indigenous people ought to take Indigenous thought seriously, they cannot easily take up Indigenous traditions or positions in order to forward their own projects."

Hill, E. (2012). A Critique of the Call to “Always Indigenize!” Peninsula: A Journal of Relational Politics 2(1): 6.

“Leanne Simpson emphasizes that attention to Indigenous knowledge is not decolonizing if knowledge is removed from Indigenous frameworks on Indigenous lands, and then integrated into Western knowledge systems elsewhere for colonial uses .”

 Indigenous methodologies

Robin Wall Kimmerer

Research relationships

 “Entering into research is entering into a relationship. It is a relationship with others, human and non-human, micro to macro.  Through it all, how the researchers conducts themselves in those relationships is critically important; their approach must consider and embody feelings, values, context, process, and outcome.

We should strive to be good in our relations and to do good in our relations.  If research is conducted in the same good way, with the same spirit and intent, then we will have done research that meets a high standard of accountability to all our relations.”

Johnston, R., McGregor, D., & Restoule, J. (2018). Introduction: Relationships, Respect, Relevance, Reciprocity and Responsibility: Taking Up Indigenous Research Approaches. In McGregor, D., J. Restoule & R. Johnston (Eds.), Indigenous Research: Theories, Practices and Relationships. (p. 19). Toronto: Canadian Scholars.

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getting help:

CHAT

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ZOOM

EMAIL

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Additional Resources

Names & Terminology

Additional Resources:

What's in a name?

Names & Terminology

 “Names are linked to identity, and notions of identity are fluid.  They change, they evolve.  What was a good term twenty years ago might be inappropriate now.  There is also the issue of how terms become co-opted and changed by government, industry, or other sneaky racists.

 Sometimes we have to abandon a term because it has become so loaded, using it means we’re tacitly agreeing to some sort of bizarre external interpretation of who we are…Be prepared to listen to what that person has to say about the term you used, and to respect what they suggest you call them instead.”

(âpihtawikosisân/C. Vowel. Indigenous Issues 101 Primers)

GPLL 245 2019 slides - M. Lake 

Names & Terminology

Indigenous – Indigenous is a term used to encompass a variety of Aboriginal groups. It is most frequently used in an international, transnational, or global context.

First Peoples -  is also an all-encompassing term that includes Inuit, First Nations and Métis.

Aboriginal - is an out of date term that is no longer used to discuss First Nations, Inuit and Metis people.
 

Indian – A term used historically to describe the first inhabitants of Canada and used to define Indigenous people in Canada under the Indian Act. Though generally considered outdated and offensive, the term “Indian” still holds legal significance in Canada.  It collectively describes all the Indigenous people in Canada who are not Inuit or Metis.

adapted from Michelle Lakes' 2019 FPST 202 slides

GPLL 245 2019 slides - M. Lake 

First Nations - ​This term applies to Status and non-status Indigenous people (excluding Metis and Inuit) and can also refer to bands (for example, “First Nations people in the Lake Superior region” and “the Curve Lake First Nation”). The term First Nations does not include Inuit or Metis peoples.  According to the Assembly of First Nations, there are 634 First Nation communities  and over 50 distinct nations and language groups across the country.

Finding specific First Nation community names:

Government of Canada - First Nation Profiles

Canadian Encyclopedia - Indigenous Peoples

Assembly of First Nations - Community Map

Secrétariat aux affaires autochtones - Aboriginal Communities of Quebec

adapted from Michelle Lakes' 2019 FPST 202 slides

GPLL 245 2019 slides - M. Lake 

Names & Terminology

 Inuit – Inuit live primarily in the four regions that make up Inuit Nunangat (Nunavut, Nunavik in northern Quebec, Nunatsiavut in northern Labrador and the Inuvialuit Settlement Region of the Northwest Territories), as well as Alaska, Greenland and the Chukotka district of Russia.
 

Inuit means people in Inuktitut and  the Inuit language.

 
The singular form of Inuit is Inuk, meaning person.

adapted from Michelle Lakes' 2019 FPST 202 slides

GPLL 245 2019 slides - M. Lake 

Names & Terminology

 Metis  - The Metis are a distinct, self-defining Indigenous People, who possess both First Nations and Euro-Settler ancestry. In the late 1700s the Metis rose out of the fur trade – in what are now the three prairie provinces (with some spillover into British Columbia, Ontario, North Dakota, Montana and the Northwest Territories) – as the children of First Nations women and the Euro-Canadian/European heritage.
 

 The Métis National Council has adopted the following definition: “Métis” means a person who self-identifies as Métis, is distinct from other Aboriginal peoples, is of historic Métis Nation Ancestry and who is accepted by the Métis Nation.”

adapted from Michelle Lakes' 2019 FPST 202 slides

GPLL 245 2019 slides - M. Lake 

Names & Terminology

Search strategies for library databases:

boolean operators, truncation, phrase searching

boolean operators, truncation, phrase searching:

SEARCH STRATEGIES FOR LIBRARY DATABASES

SEARCH STRATEGIES FOR LIBRARY DATABASES

boolean operators, truncation, phrase searching:

another example in two
EBSCO Article Databases

(YouTube, 7 mins)

Developing your search strategy: VIDEO