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.

Knowledge Organization from an Indigenous Perspective: The Mashantucket Pequot Thesaurus of American Indian Terminology Project

To inform debates about decolonizing museum records, this article maps the history of cataloging at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when material heritage was collected for museums from Indigenous peoples, the knowledge within those communities was often measured against Eurocentric biases that saw Indigenous knowledge as the object of material culture research, not a contribution to it. This article thus argues for a historical approach to understand how standards in object description involve assumptions that have resulted in a lack of Indigenous knowledge in museum records from this time.

Decolonizing Ethnographic Documentation: A Critical History of the Early Museum Catalogs at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History

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Naming, claiming, and (re)creating : Indigenous knowledge organization at the cultural interface

It is a challenge to classify Indigenous knowledge using conventional library classification systems. An interconnected network of information and ideas needs to be classified in a way that adds structure, but also demonstrates relationships and offers some flexibility. Kahnawake librarian Brian Deer developed a classification system that better reflects an Indigenous worldview and the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs Resource Centre recently released a new revision of this system. Implementing this new system was a project that produced a model and tools, as well as inspiration that other institutions can use to move toward more culturally appropriate classification.

A Case Study in Indigenous Classification: Revisiting and Reviving the Brian Deer Scheme

This article is a reflection on the case of Wikipedia, the largest online reference site with 23 million articles, with 365 million readers, and without a page called Indigenous knowledge. A Postcolonial Computing lens, extended with the notion of decentering, is used to find out what happened with Indigenous knowledge in Wikipedia. Wikipedia's ordering technologies, such as policies and templates, play a central role in producing knowledge. Two designs, developed with and for Indigenous communities, are introduced to explore if another Wikipedia's design is possible.

Decentering Design: Wikipedia and Indigenous Knowledge

Due to the lack of published information (especially in Canada) on modified classification systems and thesauri for describing and organizing Aboriginal materials, I set out to conduct a survey on this topic. The surveys were distributed at five Indigenous-related conferences and gatherings in Canada and the United States between the Fall, 2009, and the Fall, 2010, and more than 50 completed surveys were collected. 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. There was both support for and strong opposition to the use of the Medicine Wheel for this purpose, for a variety of reasons. Participants indicated a preference for non-hierarchical and less linear structures than what current mainstream classification systems provide. There also seemed to be support for “landscape-based” structures. Although research findings were not conclusive, some valuable insights were gained from this study. The exploratory nature of this research project suggests more research (and more in-depth research) in this area is required.

https://journal.lib.uoguelph.ca/index.php/perj/article/download/1427/2090

Deborah Lee

Papers

Indigenous Knowledge Organization: A Study of Concepts, Terminology, Structure and (Mostly) Indigenous Voices