Hello, my name is Aubrey and I am a library information science student. I was raised in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and the Adirondacks of New York.
Both of these regions were previously occupied by Indigenous people; the Cheyenne & the Ute, and the Mohawk of the Haudenosaunee, respectively.
As a creative writer and library student, it is important to advocate for the authentic representation of Indigenous people after a long history of colonization.
If you have questions about this guide or the resources within it, I invite you to e-mail me at ASlaterpryce@Albany.edu
To conduct your own search, consider utilizing the following keywords & search strategies.
Keywords
Indigenous, or a specific tribe's name
Native American, or Indian American
Creative Writing, or Creative Arts, or Screenwriting, Fiction, etc
Representation, or Authentic
Decolonial, or Anti-colonial
Strategies
Consider using one of the encyclopedic resources to generate new searches. These could focus on a specific region or an individual tribe's name, or you could search for linguistic group information. Mix and match different keywords to obtain different results and diversify your search results.
There are many books written by Indigenous authors that are housed within the University of Albany's Libraries.
Want to find them yourself? Try looking under the call numbers starting with E99 - History of the Americas.
Author's Note: The E99 class is a historical ghetto, in which materials related to Indigenous people are gathered into one general location and then rendered arbitrary through sorting standards such as alphabetization. Thus, materials related to the Lenape are shelved next to the Mohawk which are shelved next to those of the Navajo despite not being geographically related at all. Their only relation is within the alphabet; L, M, N. The class being called the History of the Americas is also concering, since Indigenous people continue to exist today and continue to write new books and create pieces of art.