As a library user who is now progressing toward a career in librarianship, I am beginning to realize just how much I have taken the internal structure of the library for granted. However, like other forms of public space, everything in the library has been influenced and produced by dominant settler colonialist ideologies, which prevents them from fully serving indigenous users. Inspired by Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s critical inspection of research methodology[1], in this blog post I will examine the classification systems, organizational schemes, and conceptions of legitimate knowledge used by libraries in order to address their settler colonialist ties. I will also attempt to imagine how alternatives suggested by indigenous scholars can apply to a library setting.
The
organization of library materials is not a neutral matter, but reflects the
epistemology and values of a settler colonial society. Littletree and Metoyer
discuss this in detail in their article “Knowledge Organization from an
Indigenous Perspective,” which enumerates the ways in which standard
cataloguing practices, guided by the Library of Congress, privilege
non-indigenous language and concepts.[2]
Littletree & Metoyer cite examples from a museum setting, but these
concepts are very relevant in libraries as well. They state, “Scholars and
librarians have indicated that the cataloging language silences Native American
history. It disregards the sovereignty of Native nations, as well as
historicizes and stereotypes Native people and cultures.”[3] This misuse of language not only
misrepresents indigenous concepts, twisting them and distorting them in order
to fit into a settler context, but it also makes it difficult for indigenous
users to locate material about their own cultures within libraries, privileging
the settler user’s access to information about indigenous peoples. Subject
headings beyond indigenous subjects prioritize settler perspectives: everything
in the library, from fiction to cookbooks to history, is classified based on settler
colonialist ideology. As such, indigenous users in libraries are forced to
apply settler concepts to their own searches for information.
Out
of curiosity, I conducted some brief searches in the Library of Congress
subject headings database. A glance at the subject headings for the term
“Spirituality,” for example, reveals that there are a plethora of options for
spirituality related to organized religious practice, especially predominately
Western religions.[4] The entry for the generic term states, “Here
are entered works about the personal search for sacredness or meaning that may
be independent from organized religion.”[5] None of these options seem to be applicable
in an indigenous context, in light of Littletree and Metoyer’s statement that
“Spirituality is an all-encompassing presence throughout one’s life.”[6]
I also searched for the term “Miwok,” the tribe on whose unceded territory I
grew up. I clicked on the entry for “Miwok Mythology,” and under this heading,
three works from the LOC database were listed. As far as I was able to
ascertain, all three of them were written by white authors—an anthropologist,
an ornithologist, and a British author.[7]
None of them, notably, were Miwok themselves.
Although
this is only a small sample of the LOC subject headings, it harkens to the
large body of research that Tuhiwai Smith discusses which was by settlers about
indigenous peoples.[8] This
research was conducted without understanding of the social and epistemological
structures of indigenous societies and tends to generalize settler concepts
onto indigenous social structures.[9]
Much of this work is not only inaccurate, but in service of settler dominance.
Tuhiwai Smith, for example, cites research about Maori women which completely
misplaces them, comparing their role to that of Victorian women in the
“domestic sphere.”[10]
However, as Tuhiwai Smtih states, “Indigenous women would argue that their
traditional roles included full participation in many aspects of political
decision making and marked gender separations which were complementary in order
to maintain harmony and stability.”[11]
Even though the experiences of Maori women directly contradicts what has been
written about them, the settler body of research carries a legitimacy granted
to it by settler epistemological prioritization of written work and the
structures of academia, while Maori women’s stories are granted no such value.[12]
When
works like these become available through libraries, they contribute to the
perpetuation of harmful conceptions of indigenous peoples. Of course, libraries
also contain works by indigenous peoples about themselves. The trouble is that when
patrons enter a library looking for materials about indigenous peoples, it’s
not always obvious who it was written by and what methods or motivations were
employed. Does the author belong to or have a close relationship with the
peoples they wrote about? What were their motivations? How does their personal
position problematize their story? Placing works by indigenous peoples and by settlers
in the same categories and shelf locations obscures the answers to these
questions and affords them the same level of legitimacy, ignoring the
epistemological biases of settler authors. In this way, academia’s privileging
of “scholarly” settler works about indigenous peoples over their own knowledge
about themselves[13]
also presents itself in the library.
Libraries can take an active role in the “unsettling,” to use Tuck and Yang’s word,[14] of each of these structures, which would allow them to better serve indigenous patrons. For example, they could take cue from The Mashantucket Pequot Thesaurus of American Indian Terminology Project and use subject headings informed or wholly created by indigenous people when it comes to both indigenous and non-indigenous subjects.[15] This approach could help libraries distinguish texts created by indigenous people and harmful texts created by settler researchers—by including information about the origin of the text from an indigenous perspective in catalogue metadata, libraries may be better able to epistemologically separate them. Libraries could also think about the kinds of relationships between texts when they place them physically near each other on shelves. What kinds of epistemological biases are reflected in the current placements, and how can they rearranged to reflect indigenous ways of thinking and knowing? Can libraries re-examine current systems like Dewey and utilize other kinds of connections between materials, like genealogical ones? Grappling with questions like these may help libraries deconstruct their colonial biases and provide better information access to indigenous users.
[1] Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing
Methodologies, 3rd ed. (Zed Books, 2001).
[2] Littletree and Metoyer, “Knowledge
Organization from an Indigenous Perspective: The Mashantucket Pequot Thesaurus
of American Indian Terminology Project,.”
[3] Littletree and Metoyer.
[4] Congress, “- LC Linked Data Service.”
[5] Congress, “Spirituality - LC Linked Data
Service.”
[6] Littletree and Metoyer, “Knowledge
Organization from an Indigenous Perspective: The Mashantucket Pequot Thesaurus
of American Indian Terminology Project,.”
[7] Congress, “Miwok Mythology - LC Linked
Data Service.”
[8] Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing
Methodologies.
[9] Tuhiwai Smith.
[10] Tuhiwai Smith.
[11] Tuhiwai Smith, 153.
[12] Tuhiwai Smith.
[13] Tuhiwai Smith.
[14] Tuck and Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a
Metaphor.”
[15] Littletree and Metoyer, “Knowledge
Organization from an Indigenous Perspective: The Mashantucket Pequot Thesaurus
of American Indian Terminology Project,.”
Bibliography
Congress, The Library of. “- LC Linked Data Service: Authorities and Vocabularies | Library of Congress, from LC Linked Data Service: Authorities and Vocabularies (Library of Congress).” Webpage. Accessed January 30, 2022. https://id.loc.gov/search/?q=memberOf:http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/collection_LCSHAuthorizedHeadings.
Congress, The Library of. “Miwok Mythology - LC Linked Data Service: Authorities and Vocabularies | Library of Congress, from LC Linked Data Service: Authorities and Vocabularies (Library of Congress).” Webpage. Accessed February 6, 2022. https://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh94000795.html.
Congress, The Library of. “Spirituality - LC Linked Data Service: Authorities and Vocabularies | Library of Congress, from LC Linked Data Service: Authorities and Vocabularies (Library of Congress).” Webpage. Accessed January 30, 2022. https://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85126779.html.
Littletree, Sandra, and Cheryl A. Metoyer. “Knowledge Organization from an Indigenous Perspective: The Mashantucket Pequot Thesaurus of American Indian Terminology Project,.” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 53, no. 5–6 (July 31, 2015): 640–57. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639374.2015.1010113.
Tuck, Eve, and K Wayne Yang. “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1, no. 1 (2012): 1–40.
Tuhiwai Smith, Linda. Decolonizing Methodologies. 3rd ed. Zed Books, 2001.
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