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Indigenous Studies

Identifying Indigenous Primary Sources

Primary sources are the first-hand accounts by individuals directly connected to a topic.

Primary sources include:

  • Letters or other forms of correspondence
  • Journals or diaries 
  • Newspaper articles
  • Autobiographies or memoirs 
  • Speeches
  • Interviews 
  • Works of art 
  • Oral narrative
  • Physical objects and/or material culture, such as clothing, household items, etc.
  • Police reports                                                 
  • Court transcripts 
  • Band lists and records
  • Government documents (i.e. The Indian Act, Department of Indian Affairs Reports)
  • Photographs
  • Fur trade journals
  • Missionary records

Identifying Indigenous Secondary Sources

Secondary sources are accounts by individuals who did not experience or do not have an immediate connection with an event or topic.

Secondary sources include:

  • Articles, academic or otherwise, written after an event has taken place or about a topic the author has not experienced first-hand
  • Theses and dissertations 
  • Academic monographs
  • Essays 
  • Community histories
  • Stories and films 
  • Indigenous studies

Oral Tradition and Indigenous Stories

It is important to verify the authenticity of a source before incorporating it into your essay or project.

Ask the following questions when consulting an Indigenous work:

1. From which specific Indigenous nation does the source originate?

  • Consider early missionary names such as Cree, Cherokee, Dene, and Navajo.
  • Traditional names include Nehiyawak (Cree), Tsalagi (Cherokee), Athabascan, Athabaskan, Athapascan, Athapaskan (Dene), and Diné bizaad (Navajo).

2. From which community does the source originate?

  • e.g. Saddle Lake Cree

3. With whom in the community does the source originate?

  • Stories should be traceable back to their origins (Vowel, 2016, p. 88).

For additional information, consult the following eBook:

Vowel, C. (2016). Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Metis, and Inuit Issues in Canada. Highwater Press.

Choosing a Research Topic

Indigenous studies is a interdisciplinary field. Research topics often overlap with others.

For example, a topic on land could involve searching for materials relating to spirituality and religion, political science, history, economics, environmental activism, science, culture, and/or geography.

To get started, consult the following resources:

Terminology

Why does terminology matter?

"The history of relationships between the Canadian state and Aboriginal peoples is complex, and has oftentimes been paternalistic and damaging.

As a result, terminology can represent something more than just a word. It can represent certain colonial histories and power dynamics.

Terminology can be critical for Indigenous populations, as the term for a group may not have been selected by the population themselves but instead imposed on them by colonizers." -  Terminology, Indigenous Foundations (University of British Columbia).

When writing your paper, be sure to:

  • Use politically correct terminology unless quoting directly from a source
  • Recognize that articles are not re-written and there is a history of racism ingrained in the search terms of historical and Indigenous sources

See also: