Note: Historical documents may not refer to Native Americans or other indigenous cultures in terminology that is considered culturally appropriate or sensitive. Depending on your research, you may find that perjorative terminology is used.
When starting your search, you may want to think about keywords you could incorporate into your search strategies.
Materials and authors may include the specific names of groups. Note that different spellings may be common.
The Library of Congress Classification (LCC) system includes a thesaurus of controlled vocabulary known as the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). You may have used subject headings for your own information-finding in the research process.
Catalogers started using these subject headings in 1898, and subject headings continue to be added. For instance, “refrigerators” became a heading in 1908. -- See Charting a Changing Language with LCSH (n.d.) by El-Hoshy (Library of Congress).
Though a classification system may appear neutral, terminology chosen at any point in history may represent the biases and ideologies of that time period resulting in controversial, offensive, and culturally insensitive subject headings that marginalize minorities. For instance, subject headings may use names imposed on North American Indigenous Peoples (NAIP) during colonization rather than preferred tribal names, or they may hide communities through grouping them into a single subject heading such as Indigenous Peoples.
Some subject headings have been modified in order to make subject-headings and their structures more inclusive and accurate. For instance, the Library of Congress changed Chippewa Indians to Ojibwe Indians in order to use this tribe’s self-preferred name. However, there is still much work to be done in this area. Calls to change subject headings to more accurately represent the Native American experience have not yet been made e.g. from relocation to removal. --See "Omissions and Distortion Abound in Libraries, Too" (4 Feb. 2019) by Sanford Berman.
See Examples:
Some libraries and organizations have embarked on projects to create alternate classifications or to modify Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) to better represent works related to Indigenous communities. For instance, Bone and Lougheed (2017) write about the Association of Manitoba Archives’ decision to make changes to Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) “to better describe material about or by Indigenous peoples” found in its archival repositories. --See Bone & Lougheed (2018) "Library of Congress Subject Headings Related to Indigenous Peoples: Changing LCSH for Use in a Canadian Archival Context".
Additional Resources
Dieckman, Christopher; Teal, Wesley; and Wintermute, Harriet, "What's in a Name? Decolonizing North American Indigenous Peoples Subject Headings in Iowa" (2020). Collections and Technical Services Conference Proceedings, Presentations and Posters. 6.
The authors note that Library of Congress Subject Heading (LCSH) often do not describe North American Indigenous People (NAIP) by their preferred names. Efforts to decolonize NAIP subject headings are more extensive in the Canada than in the U.S. They are working on a project to identify, use, and make available culturally sensitive terminology for NAIP headings used in Iowa.
DuPont, Sarah. “One Decolonizing Change to Subject Headings at UBC Library” (25 June 2020). Xwi7xwa Library.
The Xwi7xwa Library adopts Aboriginal Canadians as a broader subject heading rather than First Nations in order to be more inclusive. Years earlier, Xwi7xwa Library rejected the use of Indians of North America for a local solution. FNHL refers to the First Nations House of Learning Thesaurus.
Webster, Kelly, and Ann Doyle. "Don't Class Me in Antiquities! Giving Voice to Native American Materials." Radical cataloging: Essays at the Front (2008): 189-197.
This article notes that Native American classifications have been relegated to the E schedule of the LCSH which can actually reduce rather than increase access to materials. The authors highlight organizations that are creating and/or using alternate classifications to describe Indigenous works in their collections. (193)
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