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Indigenous Programs at Laurentian

Native Studies was first established as an undergraduate program by  the University of Sudbury and was recently renamed Indigenous Studies. It publishes the Undergraduate Journal of Indigenous Studies : Dbaajmowin.

At Laurentian itself,  the School of Native Human Services, which offered an undergraduate degree in social work, was renamed The School of Indigenous Relations.  This School has two programs:  The Honours Bachelor of Indigenous Social Work program and the Master of Indigenous Relations program.  The School is a proud sponsor of the Indigenous Social Work Journal previously called the Native Social Work Journal.

Courses are also taught from an Indigenous perspective in such disciplines as Architecture, Education, English,  Nursing, and Sociology.

Faculty Consultants

This research guide has been prepared in consultation with Taima Moeke-Pickering, from the School of Indigenous Relations as well as Sheila Cote-Meek, former Associate Vice-President Academic and Indigenous Programs, now at York University.

Welcome

The purpose of this guide is to recommend print and electronic resources for conducting research in Indigenous Studies in the libraries on Laurentian University's campus.  Click on the tabs on the left for suggestions about starting your research, getting books and articles, and finding other useful tools for research in Indigenous Studies.

Connect from Off Campus

Most of the Library's online resources are available to you from anywhere off campus.  See: LU Proxy Accounts.

Library Instruction

To learn more about the library and its resources and how you can exploit them to your advantage, register in the Research Skills Tutorial on D2L. There are several sections in the tutorial with a short quiz at the end of each; at the end you will receive a Certificate of Completion. Many professors require you to take this tutorial--and once you finish it, you can save your certificate to reprint as often as necessary.

We can hold special classes at the request of at least 5 students. If you would like to arrange a special class, or you think your course would benefit from some in-class library instruction, please ask your professor to contact the librarian responsible for your faculty to set up some sessions.

More Help

In the library: The Library User Assistance Desk to your immediate left as you enter the library is a good place to start.

By email: Email the librarian responsible for your faculty for a reply during regular working hours.

Research consultations: Book a research consultation with the librarian responsible for your faculty by Zoom or phone.

By chat: With our "Ask the Library" service. For more information, see About Ask a Librarian.

For Distance Education students: Telephone: 1-800-661-1058, ext. 2 or email: bibdesmaraislib@laurentian.ca

Get Started

Quick Tips on Preparing For Research

Before you start:

  • understand the key terms you may be using as well as the general area that interests you;
  • think about ways to narrow your topic, making it as specific as possible (unless you have been given a specific topic to research!);
  • create a thesis statement;
  • list  the main concepts (key words) included in your thesis statement (research question), then based on your readings;
  • find as many synonyms as you can for each main concept. You are now ready to start searching in the library's catalogue and databases.

When you are looking for definitions or if you don’t know much about a specific subject, reference works such as dictionaries and encyclopedias become invaluable because they contain relatively short—and understandable—articles. These articles often lay out the parameters of a subject and can assist you in trying to narrow your topic. Often such articles are accompanied by lists of readings (bibliographies) which allow you to explore your topic further.

 A good general reference work is: Native Peoples A to Z : A Reference Guide to Native Peoples of the Western Hemisphere, which the publisher describes as " A current reference work that reflects the changing times and attitudes of, and towards the indigenous peoples of all the regions of the Americas."

Terminology

Over the years the terminology used to describe Indigenous peoples has changed, especially by non-indigenous peoples when referring to Indigenous peoples. For example, Indian was used for the longest time, but it is no longer viewed as an appropriate term to describe Canada's Indigenous populations. This page provides links to resources that deal with terminology and Indigenous studies:

Atlases, Dictionaries and Encyclopedias

Atlas

Dictionaries

Encyclopedias

Get Books and Theses

Why Use Books?

  • Books are extremely valuable resources when doing in-depth research on a topic! Authors have hundreds of pages to give detailed explanations and background information surrounding the various facets of your research interest.
  • Using this kind of in-depth information will make it easier to form a research question or thesis statement (or even spark your inspiration)
  • The bibliographies found in books are extensive, and will point you to other resources to add to your own resource list.
  • Remember: scholars write journal articles under the assumption that you already have a relatively thorough understanding of the topic – this means that you will likely not find the foundational information needed for your topic in the beginning stages of your research process. In this sense, books become indispensable

Searching the Catalogue

The catalogue is your primary tool for finding books in the J.N. Desmarais Library. You can also use the catalogue to find other materials, including government publications and journals (including individual articles).

You can search the catalogue by:

  • Title
  • Author/Creator
  • Subject
  • Call Number

When you know the book you are searching for, pick Title or Author; when you are searching for a topic, start with Keyword unless you know the exact Subject heading describing your topic.

More on searching the Catalogue is available in Module 5 of the Research Skills Tutorial in D2L.

E-Books

E-books are located in two different places:

  • Some may be located by using the library’s catalogue and selecting "Books & eBooks" as the "Material Type" and then further filtering your results by "Available online". 
  • E-books can also be located by searching in e-book collections. Searching in these collections is the same as searching in a database.

Recommended E-Book Collections

WorldCat

With nearly 200 million records representing titles held by nearly 75,000 libraries you will find almost any book ever published in the English language in WorldCat.
 
 

Theses

In addition to books, you may wish to search for book-length Master's theses or Ph.D dissertations.

Best bet:  Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest).

If you are also looking for recent theses or dissertations produced by Laurentian graduates, check out our Research Repository - LUZONE.  Note that since 2013, before graduation all Master's and Doctoral candidates MUST deposit their theses or dissertations in this repository.

Get Articles

Articles: Quick Tips

The databases to the right provide references to many scholarly journal articles and papers.

  1. Start off with keyword searches expressing your topic. Keyword searching crosses all fields.
  2. Use Search Operators such as "OR" and "AND" to expand or reduce your results.
  3. Review those items that look relevant, then, exploit the details within those entries to help lead you to other relevant articles.
    • Pay attention to the subject headings (often called "descriptors") to see how the database describes your topic and use them to find related articles.
    • Find other papers written by the same author; these will typically be on similar subjects.
    • Follow citation trails: other articles that have cited this article will probably be on a related subject and will include citations to other articles of interest.
  4. For more Secrets of Searching a Database, review that section in How to Research Like a Librarian.

Peer Review

Peer Review is the evaluation of creative work by scholars in the same field in order to maintain or enhance the quality of the work in that field.

In the case of peer reviewed journals, which are usually academic, peer review generally refers to the evaluation of the articles in them prior to publication. For more, check out this definition of peer review.

  • To ascertain whether a journal is peer reviewed, consult Ulrichsweb.

Recommended Starting Databases

Specialized Subject Databases

  • Autochtonia (Indigenous peoples living in Quebec.  For full cite, cick +Référence)
  • Caninuit (An annotated source of information about the magazines, journals, newspapers and newsletters of Canada's Inuit peoples and communities. This web site was created in 2008 and the annotations are being updated and augmented regularly by the editor. Caninuit can be browsed by title or category, or searched in anyword (Find) mode.
  • Hubert Wenger Eskimo Database (University of Alaska, Fairbanks. A collection of historical images, maps and written sources concerning Inuit/Eskimo peoples. Covers 19th and 20th century, but is not meant as a source of current information.)
  • Metis Centre of HAHO Databases (Material on Metis health and well-being and social determinants of health)

Newspapers

  • Anishinabek News The voice of the Anishinabek nation (Union of Ontario Indians).
  • First Nations Drum Canada's largest First Nations Newspaper.
  • Turtle Island News  "Canada's only national native weekly newspaper, published every week at the Grand River Territory of the Six Nations in southern Ontario. It is a politically independent newspaper that is wholly owned and operated by Aboriginal people."​
  • Wataway News Online Northern Ontario's First Nations Voice Since 1974.

Some Related Databases

  • Academic OneFile ?

    Description: More than 14,000 titles, including more than 9,000 peer-reviewed journals and more than 6,000 in full text. Extensive coverage of the physical sciences, technology, medicine, social sciences, the arts, theology, literature and other subjects since 1980.

  • America: History and Life ?

    Description: Covers literature on the history and culture of the U.S. and Canada from prehistory to the present. The index includes 1,700 journals from as far back as 1910. Access is limited to 6 concurrent users.

  • Anthropology Plus ?

    Description: A compilation of the Anthropological Index Online and Anthropological Literature databases, this resource is an extensive index of bibliographic materials covering the fields of anthropology, archaeology, and related interdisciplinary research.

  • ASTIS Arctic Science and Technology Information System (ASTIS) database ?

    Description: The ASTIS database contains 16,200 records describing research projects conducted in Canada's three northern territories since 1974. Coverage of publications include reports from government agencies, industry, First Nations, and universities as well as journal articles, conference papers, theses and books. ASTIS is maintained by the Arctic Institute of North America at the University of Calgary, and is part of the Canadian Polar Information Network.

  • Canadian Business & Current Affairs™ (CBCA) Complete ?

    Description: More than 4.5 million records from 1,730 titles covering current events, business, education, science, the arts, and academic information as produced in Canada. The database also includes a few Canadian legal journals that are in neither Hein Online nor Lexis-Nexis, also full-text.

  • Canadian Periodicals Index Quarterly (CPI.Q) ?

    Description: The CPI provides access to articles from a comprehensive list of Canadian and international journals, magazines, selected sections of the Globe and Mail, Canadian biographies and other reference content from Gale™, all with a Canadian focus. Indexing from 1980 to present; Full-text articles from 1983 to present.

  • CINAHL ?

    Description: CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature) provides indexing for more than 2,980 journals from the fields of nursing and allied health. The database contains more than 2,000,000 records dating back to 1981.

  • European Views of the Americas: 1493 to 1750 ?

    Description: Contains more than 32,000 entries and is a comprehensive guide to printed records about the Americas written in Europe before 1750. It covers the history of European exploration as well as portrayals of Native American peoples.

  • ERIC (ProQuest) ?

    Description: ERIC provides education research literature (in the context of the North American educational system) to improve practice in learning, teaching, educational decision-making, and research. ERIC includes journal articles, conference proceedings, government documents, theses, dissertations, reports, audiovisual media, bibliographies, directories, and books. Coverage starts in 1966.

  • Google Scholar ?

    Description: "Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature... across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites."

  • ProQuest Nursing & Allied Health Premium ?

    Description: Health care information covering nursing, allied health, alternative and complementary medicine. Includes over 890 full-text journals and 12,300 full-text dissertations plus over 2.000 Videos. More more see https://proquest.libguides.com/nahd#s-lg-box-25376941

  • Social Services Abstracts ?

    Description: provides bibliographic coverage of current research focused on social work, human services, and related areas, including social welfare, social policy, and community development. The database abstracts and indexes over 1,300+ serials publications and includes abstracts of journal articles and dissertations, and citations to book reviews.

  • Social Work Abstracts ?

    Description: Offers extensive coverage of more than 900 social work and human services journals dating back to 1965. Access is limited to 4 concurrent users.

Some Open Access Journals

Citation Sources

When researching a paper, it is useful to consult the citations used by the author of an article that you find relevant.  But that article itself may have been cited by other authors after it was first written. Two sources help you identify such citations:

Getting Articles @ Laurentian

In any database, when you see an article that interests you, click on it and, unless the article is available within the database itself, within the record you will see an image that says "Get it @ Laurentian":

Get it at Laurentian

When you click on that,  you will arrive at a menu which will lead to an electronic copy of the article you want, or, if not available electronically, to Laurentian's catalogue which will allow you to check if the article is available in print in the library, and if not, to a final link which allows you to order the item through Interlibrary loan.

Get Films

Online Film Collections

  • NFB (National Film Board) ?

    Description: The NFB's online Screening Room features over 3,000 films, excerpts, trailers and interactive works (including) documentaries, animation, experimental films and fiction (with a Canadian context or perspective.)

Need a Film Not in Laurentian's Online Film Collections?

​Consult: Watmedia (Provincial Multi-media Catalogue).  Material held by Laurentian may be signed out in the library. To order a film not available at Laurentian, please email LUFilmLibrary@laurentian.ca and specify the date(s) you require the item.

Questions:  Please contact Ginette Gervais, coordinator of interlibrary loan.

The Best Internet Portals

General

Archival Sources

Business and Commerce

Children

Cultural Awareness (for non-Indigenous)

Doctrine of Discovery

Education

Health

  • Native Health Database (Sponsored by the University of New Mexico, encompasses Indigenous peoples throughout North America)

History

Images

  • Glenbow Archives Photographs related to the history of western Canada, with a strong Blackfoot collection.
  • Images Canada 75,000+ images from Library and Archives Canada and other Canadian cultural institutions.
  • Mi'kmaq Portrait Collection 700+ Portraits and illustrations at the Nova Scotia Museum.

Literature

Law

Methodologies

National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls

Policies

Public Opinion

Canadian Public Opinion on Aboriginal Peoples (An Environics Survey)

Political Organizations

Residential Schools

Royal Commissions

Sociology

Statistics

Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Citing Sources and Zotero

Why Cite?

We cite sources to acknowledge the work of others, as well as to avoid academic dishonesty or plagiarism.

The University of Toronto  has made available a comprehensive set of guidelines on How NOT to Plagiarize which deserves to be read by every student.

Citation Style in Laurentian's indigenous Programs

At Laurentian, professors will specify the citation style to be used. To learn more about individual citation styles, consult Laurentian's guide to citation styles.

Zotero

is a free, web-based citation manager that allows you to: 

  • Directly import references from article databases, the library catalogue, e-book collections, etc.
  • Manage and organize your references.
  • Create a bibliography.
  • Share your references with others
  • Add in-text citation and a bibliography directly into your assignment 

Connect to Zotero

Getting started with Zotero: