Imagining: Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=wccq20 Cataloging & Classification Quarterly ISSN: 0163-9374 (Print) 1544-4554 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wccq20 Imagining: Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies Marisa Elena Duarte & Miranda Belarde-Lewis To cite this article: Marisa Elena Duarte & Miranda Belarde-Lewis (2015) Imagining: Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies, Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 53:5-6, 677-702, DOI: 10.1080/01639374.2015.1018396 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01639374.2015.1018396 Published online: 31 Jul 2015. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 14229 View related articles View Crossmark data Citing articles: 22 View citing articles https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=wccq20 https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wccq20 https://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/01639374.2015.1018396 https://doi.org/10.1080/01639374.2015.1018396 https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=wccq20&show=instructions https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=wccq20&show=instructions https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/mlt/10.1080/01639374.2015.1018396 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/mlt/10.1080/01639374.2015.1018396 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/01639374.2015.1018396&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2015-07-31 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/01639374.2015.1018396&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2015-07-31 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/citedby/10.1080/01639374.2015.1018396#tabModule https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/citedby/10.1080/01639374.2015.1018396#tabModule Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 53:677–702, 2015 Published with license by Taylor & Francis ISSN: 0163-9374 print / 1544-4554 online DOI: 10.1080/01639374.2015.1018396 Imagining: Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies MARISA ELENA DUARTE Program in American Indian Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA MIRANDA BELARDE-LEWIS Northwest Indian College, Port Gamble S’Klallam, Washington, USA For at least half a century, catalogers have struggled with how to catalog and classify Native American and Indigenous peoples ma- terials in library, archive, and museum collections. Understand- ing how colonialism works can help those in the field of knowl- edge organization appreciate the power dynamics embedded in the marginalization of Native American and Indigenous peoples ma- terials through standardization, misnaming, and other practices. The decolonizing methodology of imagining provides one way that knowledge organization practitioners and theorists can acknowl- edge and discern the possibilities of Indigenous community-based approaches to the development of alternative information struc- tures. KEYWORDS Indigenous knowledge, knowledge organization, cataloging, classification of knowledge, Indigenous peoples, Amer- ican Indians INTRODUCTION: “WE’RE ALL THE SAME, DIFFERENTLY” For at least half a century catalogers have experienced difficulty describ- ing Native American materials. By the late 1970s, research in critical subject analysis had “forced the library world to recognize that many of the terms used in subject analysis, particularly subject headings, reflected judgments that were highly subjective.”1 Challenges include identifying authoritative © Marisa Elena Duarte and Miranda Belarde-Lewis Received August 2014; revised February 2015; accepted February 2015. Address correspondence to Marisa Elena Duarte, Arizona State University, School of Social Transformation, PO Box 876403, Tempe, AZ 85287-6403, USA. E-mail: marisa.duarte@asu.edu 677 678 M. E. Duarte and M. Belarde-Lewis names of tribes and peoples, such as Navajo or Diné; historical periodization within Anglo-American cataloging and classification schemes; and identify- ing accurate terms to reflect the unexpected diversity of Indigenous topics. We assert that these are not unrelated and inconvenient phenomena en- demic to Indigenous knowledge, but rather the evidence of systemic colonial marginalization. However, rather than focusing on the marginalization, we choose to imagine the decolonizing possibilities of Indigenous knowledge organiza- tion. There are over 600 distinct tribes within U.S. political borders alone, each one representing unique epistemologies, ways of knowing, languages, and histories. In theory, if every tribal government had a library of their own, organized according to the local Indigenous epistemology or epistemologies (in the case of multiple peoples in one region), we would have over 600 distinct Indigenous knowledge organization systems. But in the contempo- rary moment, this is not the case. Thus, while it is not easy to imagine how even a single Indigenous knowledge organization system emerges Indige- nous knowledge organization systems also represent an integral theoretical question for information professionals serving Indigenous communities. We therefore find it of critical importance to highlight (1) how Indige- nous and non-Indigenous imaginaries articulate around a plurality of knowl- edge systems and (2) what we can learn from the distinctiveness of Indige- nous knowledge organization efforts. As Kanaka Maoli philosopher Manu- lani Aluli Meyer asserts, “specificity leads to universality.”2 Understanding distinctiveness leads us to appreciate how “we are all the same, differently.”3 We accomplish this by explaining how colonialism shapes knowledge or- ganization work, presenting the decolonizing technique of imagining, and highlighting a sample of Indigenous knowledge organization efforts. DECOLONIZATION IS KNOWLEDGE WORK At its most basic, decolonization work is about the divestment of foreign oc- cupying powers from Indigenous homelands, modes of government, ways of caring for the people and living landscapes, and especially ways of think- ing. For non-Indigenous individuals decolonization work means stepping back from normative expectations that (1) all knowledge in the world can be represented in document form, (2) to some degree, already is, and (3) Indigenous ways of knowing belong in state-funded university and govern- ment library, archive, and museum collections, especially for the benefit of society’s privileged elite. In the contemporary colonial moment, as an out- come of effective marginalization, Indigenous peoples have largely had to either make do with inaccurately and imprecisely organized documents by reading through and searching through the interstices of subject headings Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies 679 and classification systems, or by collecting and collating their own items in smaller, flexible, sometimes ephemeral, private offline and online locations. Thus in sharing this concept of imagining, what we are asking non- Indigenous readers to do is step outside of the normative expectations about how the documents written for, by, and about Indigenous peo- ples ought to be organized, and instead acknowledge the reasons why In- digenous peoples might prefer to develop their own approaches. Mean- while, Indigenous epistemic partners have to imagine the ontological and epistemological ways the documents and knowledge artifacts about their peoples cohere and interrelate, and forge partnerships for building sys- tems that reflect, as appropriate, Indigenous epistemologies and local needs. Of course, the process of actually building systems is easier said than done. We present the ideas in this article with a few kinds of readers in mind: knowledge organization specialists who are interested in supporting Indigenous decolonization and self-determination work, Indigenous theorists and information professionals, and information scientists who study how epistemological distinctiveness relates to the cataloging and classification of knowledge. For some readers, the discussion of colonialism is new. For oth- ers, it is an everyday reality. Indigenous theorists will understand imagining as a means to decolonize. For expert knowledge organization specialists, this may be an introduction to the theoretical nature of Indigenous knowledge work as a decolonization prerequisite. While reading, non-Indigenous epistemic partners will want to step out- side their comfort zone, sensitize themselves to Indigenous histories and political realities, learn to listen in new ways, and position themselves as fol- lowers in collaborative projects with Indigenous specialists leading the way. Practices and processes that may frustrate a non-Indigenous project mem- ber may in fact represent integral decision-making and conceptual processes for tribal communities. Indeed, non-Indigenous readers should know that what often happens for Indigenous peoples when discussing colonialism is a reopening of brutal historical traumas, in which non-Indigenous actors are often caught in a guilt/shame/blame cycle with Indigenous actors once again taking on the role of mute noble listeners, while at the same time metabo- lizing the pain of recognizing that much of our ways of knowing have been lost, subjugated, censored, and stolen from our communities, with no sub- stantial return of documents, artifacts, institutions, or status in the foreseeable future. Simultaneously, as Indigenous thinkers, in order to imagine, we must not allow the trauma of past harms to cloud our future vision. Just as non-Indigenous partners must not underestimate the near-total devastation of colonialism for Indigenous peoples, Indigenous partners must also be open to creative new possibilities toward the flourishing of Indigenous peoples. 680 M. E. Duarte and M. Belarde-Lewis NATIVE AMERICANS AND COLONIALISM There are many vantage points from which to understand colonialism; many peoples in the world have experienced colonization of different landscapes and oceanscapes at different points in a range of histories. Understanding how the concepts of Native Americans and colonialism fit together reveals how Indigeneity provides a lens for perceiving cataloging and classification practices in non-Western knowledge domains. Classification and the State: Who Are Native Americans? The term Native American is the latest term the United States federal govern- ment designates to refer to the exceptional class of U.S. citizens descended from the original Indigenous peoples of what is now U.S. geopolitical ter- rain. The term was changed from American Indian in around the mid 1990s, when the United States began to adopt the social policy of multiculturalism, a move that accepts minority rights as equal rights, but also fails to discern and acknowledge the inherent sovereignty and treaty rights of Indigenous peoples. Unfortunately, many people now mistake Native Americans for ethnic minorities, as the term is similar to the terms African American and Asian American. However, to do so is to overlook and obscure Native peo- ples’ non-Western Indigenous philosophies and their inherent sovereignty as self-governing peoples, as well as the profound detrimental legacy of colonialism. The term American Indian emerged out of common use by Spanish colonial authorities and settlers who, since the late 1500s, were erroneously describing Indigenous inhabitants as indios, or “Indians.” The terms “Na- tive American,” “American Indian,” and “Indian” are all terms of conflation designed for governmental racial and class management. Tribal peoples rec- ognize themselves not by race or class, but by the names of their tribe (i.e., Navajo or Diné, for Navajo Nation). In the 1960s, organizers of the Ameri- can Indian Movement reclaimed the racist nomenclature “American Indian” as a source of intertribal, shared identity and empowerment among the In- digenous, non-Settler, non-immigrant peoples of the United States. At this point in U.S. history, because of early treaty negotiations and a U.S. policy of equality toward non-white socially disadvantaged citizens, American Indians and/or Native Americans are granted certain rights and support mechanisms, including federal funding for education and healthcare services in exchange for the ongoing illegal and unjust U.S. occupation of sovereign Native lands. For theoretical and scientific purposes, it is important to understand the term “Native American” as a colonial tool for describing an Indigenous U.S. population in aggregate, regardless of the social, political, and philosoph- ical distinctions of the many tribal peoples of the United States. It is also Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies 681 important to recognize that Native American experiences of U.S. Settler colo- nialism differentiate rights-based movements from those forged by U.S. eth- nic minorities. Colonialism and the Power to Name Since the 1970s, the information scientific literature has identified the cat- alogers’ and classificationists’ power to name, including the governmental power to name.4 In the everyday sense, the power to name is a way of organizing, of itemizing, of making information and knowledge accessible to both a specific and imaginary constituent audience. The practice of cat- aloging and classifying is satisfying; there are approved tools, standards, techniques, languages, instructors, policies, and institutions to support the practice. Yet it is precisely all of this structure that makes imagining alterna- tive Indigenous approaches so elusive and frustrating, and as some have said, inconvenient. The structure becomes epistemologically self-referential; few catalogers can imagine a world, practice, and bibliographic universe parallel to, much less prior to, the innovation of Library of Congress, Dewey, and the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR). Thus, when, at an epistemologi- cal level, we understand how the single term “Native American” occludes and erases a wide range of distinctive epistemologies, philosophies, languages, and experiences, we can appreciate how our contemporary dependence on this imprecise term leads to categorical misunderstanding. When we under- stand how governments and elite classes of citizens continually benefit from this categorical misunderstanding, we gain an insight into a key mechanism of colonialism. Colonialism is both a socioeconomic policy and an expansionist ideol- ogy.5 Historically, colonialism has manifested in many different ways in many different communities—colonizers tame “wild” terrain accordingly—but at its core, it emerges as a set of relationships in which one social group contin- ually and habitually profits by exploiting the living environments, bodies, social organization, and spiritualities of another social group. Colonialism is distinct from occasional exploitation or profiteering, as it is marked by generations of subjugation such that the profiting social group begins to build all social structures and institutions around themselves to support the belief in their superiority as well as their means of exploitative and violent profit-making. A marker of an expansionist ideology is the suppression of Indigenous histories. This is reflected in the structure and naming of many nation-state catalogs: “uncomfortable information can be hidden behind inappropriate subject headings: for example the use of terms like ABORIGINES, AUS- TRALIA – TREATMENT for works which might more appropriately receive the heading GENOCIDE.”6 682 M. E. Duarte and M. Belarde-Lewis Native and Indigenous scholars are currently in an era of analyzing the many pathways and mechanisms of colonialism. Broadly, colonization—the verb, or enactment, of colonialism—is based on four overlapping mecha- nisms: (1) the classification of diverse Indigenous peoples as a single lesser- class of sub-humans deserving of social subjugation at best and extermination at worst; (2) the theft and settlement of Indigenous lands and social spaces by an elite Settler class; (3) the articulation of institutions to support this class system and the elite control of the environment; and (4) the disciplin- ing of elite forms of knowledge through the marginalization of Indigenous languages, philosophies, spiritualities, and modes of self-government.7 Colo- nialism is subtle, insidious, and nearly invisible to privileged citizens of a Settler state. It is most visible to those who suffer the worst of its inner work- ings. While knowledge organization researchers and practitioners may not be able to overhaul generations of social inequalities, adopting and including terms that reflect the experiences and perspectives of the marginalized is a step toward the redress of colonial power. WHAT CATALOGERS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT COLONIALISM When we are cognizant of the ways colonialism works through techniques of naming, describing, collocating, classifying, and standardizing, we can better appreciate, formulate, imagine, and support Indigenous approaches to knowledge organization. However, before we can create spaces for In- digenous ontologies—that is, alternative information structures guided by Indigenous concepts of realities—we have to understand when and how cataloging and classification practices become techniques of colonization. The Supremacy of the Book and the Colonial Record In the Americas, scholars have traced the Enlightenment-era supremacy of the book and the written word all the way back to the first encounters between Franciscan mendicants and Mexica tlamatine, or spiritual leaders.8 With the Bible inscribed with the word of a universal God, Spanish colonizers entered Anahuac, present-day Mexico, and surrounding regions intent on converting many Indigenous peoples to at least three belief systems. One of these was toward the Spanish Empire, a political and spatial conversion. Another was toward the Catholic faith, a spiritual conversion. A third was toward Spanish language literacy, an epistemological, and in many ways, spatial, conversion. Wrought together, these conflated, elided, and devalued Indigenous political, social, spiritual, and linguistic plurality, leading to the Spanish rule of Anahuac by occupation, and ultimately, over centuries, the foundations of a Spanish-speaking, text-based, modern Mexican nation-state. Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies 683 This is not to say that creativity and self-governance in Indigenous spir- itualities, philosophies, and ways of knowing were eradicated. Indeed, the vividness of modern nation-state imaginaries is very much founded on pro- ductive use and domination over Indigenous bodies of knowledge.9 But what makes Western text-based systems so visible and, therefore, apparently superior to oral, kinesthetic, aesthetic, and communal Indigenous ways of knowing—quipu, ceremonies, dances, songs, oral histories, oratory, stories, hunting and growing practices, healing arts, weaving, painting, pottery, carv- ing, dreaming, and vision work—are the institutions through which Western text-based systems are legitimated. These institutions include crown- and state-funded libraries, museums, archives, and databases.10 From an Indige- nous perspective, or even from a perspective that appreciates the multiplicity of knowledges, the desire to imagine the Bible as a book proscribing uni- versal law is not unrelated to the desire to make the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) a system for describing the world’s knowledge. At this point in history, libraries, museums, and archives, and the cataloging and classification systems promulgated therein, are designed around a Western European orientation to texts, reading, and the categorical particularization of knowledge.11 Indigenous peoples are not the only ones who can see or who experience this pervasive colonial subjugation. In consideration of the effect of the Western European colonization of Africa and the result- ing African and Black diaspora, Northwestern University librarian Kathleen Bethel once wrote: “How comforting it must be, not to mention empowering, for some white men to enter each and every library in the Western world and find solid validation of their existence.”12 From the perspective of the systemically oppressed, library catalogs read like a great mirror of the mod- ern Western consciousness, post-Conquest, post-Settlement, and through the rise of industrialization, 1898–beyond. Vanishing Indians of North America: The Blindness of Text-Based Colonialism Of course there have been serious efforts by librarians, catalogers, archivists, classificationists, and curators to amend the glaring absence of marginalized voices in all kinds of catalogs. Some of these have been through appeals to change standard practices, adopt new terms, create new classes, and invest in linking technologies. Scholars and practitioners have identified common ways the works by, for, and about marginalized peoples are repeatedly seg- regated and “ghettoized” through institutional cataloging and classification practices.13 Most commonly, these practices consist of (1) misnaming, or using Western-centric terms to describe Indigenous phenomena; (2) using parts to describe a more holistic phenomena, or the reduction, removal, and de-linking of a piece of a knowledge system from a greater ontology; (3) 684 M. E. Duarte and M. Belarde-Lewis emphasis on modern nationalist periodization, inclusive of the notion that history as it is written by the colonizers cannot be changed; and (4) empha- sis on prohibiting changes to practices that would upset the efficiency of the existing standardized schema. The overall effect is continual subjugation of Native systems of knowledge in favor of a centralized modern Western system of knowledge, to which all other ontologies that have the potential for describing the world must cohere. A good example of how colonization works through classification and cataloging practices is found in the Thomas Yen-Ran Yeh proposals.14 In 1971, in the wake of the Civil Rights movements, concerned Central Wash- ington State College Librarian Thomas Yen-Ran Yeh wrote to Library of Congress Principle Subject Cataloger Eugene Frosio, proposing adjustments to the LCSH E–F class treatment of “Indians of North America.” Associating unjust societal treatment of American Indians with the awkward and erro- neous description and placement of “Indians of North America,” Yeh sug- gested revising classes and creating new headings and classes that would col- locate the histories of American Indians within modern U.S. eras, rather than within pre-Columbian eras. Yeh also suggested collocating “Indian Wars” as a part of modern U.S. history, prefatory to the U.S. wars of expansion, as well as including new classes for new headings “American Indians—20th century history” and “American Indians—21st century history.” Yeh reasoned, Amer- ican Indians were granted full US citizenship in 1924, so there should be a class for this US minority group within modern twentieth-century U.S. history. He also reasoned, if we as catalogers more accurately represent American Indians, reducing our colonial bias to structure them bibliographically as prehistoric war-like savages, then perhaps this would also change present conditions for American Indians. Insightfully, Yeh identified the simulacra of cataloging and classification structures: how we structure our knowledge shapes who, what, and how we can know. Frosio’s response was disappointing, but also in accord with the internal logic of colonial classification systems. A hallmark of these systems is that they work to reify the hegemonic epistemological order of the dominant class—in this case, Western-centric U.S. history. Frosio responded that it was not logical to include “Indians of North America” within the stream of modern, post-twentieth-century U.S. history, because to do so would no longer signify their existence as “historical remnants.”15 This is a common logic within Settler imaginaries; the Settler state is built on the righteous subjugation of a permanently dead, dying, or otherwise vanishing Indigenous race and world order. Frosio added that, at any rate, to adjust the historical classification of “Indians of North America” would violate the adherence to literary warrant, which, at that point in U.S. history, largely consisted of, so to speak, the history of the conquerors. Frosio also added that any such changes would also prove inefficient, and so could not be managed. Appealing to efficiency, a value associated with a pragmatic approach to industrialization, Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies 685 we see Frosio prioritizing the speedy pace of modern U.S. advance over the conscientious duty to correct misrepresentation of peoples intentionally marginalized through U.S. social policies. Yet there is a greater colonial logic at play in the Yeh proposals that has to do with the blindness about the full depth and range of Native ways of knowing. While Frosio dismissed Yeh’s recommendations out of, presum- ably, a duty to retain the internal logic, stability, and authority over the LC bibliographic universe, Yeh, in submitting these proposed changes, was also abiding by a colonial logic: the logic of eventual assimilation. Yeh presumed, as many Settlers do, that the many Indigenous peoples residing within U.S. political borders would assimilate to become Americans. Presumably, their ways of knowing—their distinctly non-Western ontologies—would eventu- ally align with the standard ontology designed through literary warrant and described by the LCSH in combination with the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules. This is the blind spot of text-based literacy-based colonial societies. Although it is possible to colonize facets of the landscape through re-mapping territories, re-writing histories, re-inscribing institutions, re- classifying sovereign peoples as citizen subjects, and re-naming individuals and phenomena to cohere within dominating epistemologies, it is not possi- ble to completely subdue peoples whose ways of knowing are not primarily text-based, but oral, communal, aesthetic, kinesthetic, and emergent from living landscapes. In spite of early Spanish efforts to colonize the Ameri- cas through the spread of literacy, “the Spanish never understood that, if the Amerindians lacked letters, they themselves by the same token lacked quipus and amoxtli. And while the Spanish had men of letters, the Incas had quipucamayac and Mexicas tlacuilo.”16 Further, “it was the speech of those who knew how to ‘look at the stars and the sky’ and to ‘unfold the pinturas’ that the Mexicas referred as authoritative, not to writing and the book.”17 “Indians of North America” is a wholly inaccurate term for describing the ways the myriad distinct Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island, Anahuac, and Tawantinsuyu know themselves. Furthermore, embedded in the names they call themselves are whole networks of semiotic interactions that are very likely often incommensurable with Anglo-American lists of terms and knowledge structures. Being aware of the context of names and the colonial practice of re- naming helps us understand the frustration Indigenous peoples experience when attempting to research Indigenous histories through Western-oriented classification and cataloging systems. It also helps us to appreciate the depth of the hegemonic rules of order that, through the disciplining of knowl- edge and power, makes it challenging for groups of concerned individuals requesting revisions in cataloging and classification systems to see those changes through. As we note above, daily awareness of colonialism cycles can produce in individuals its own suite of affective, psychological, social, 686 M. E. Duarte and M. Belarde-Lewis and political responses. Working for revisions in a focused way with groups such as the Subject Analysis Committee of the Association for Library Col- lections and Technical Services or the American Association of Law Libraries requires the development of yet another skillset very much built on patience and an appreciation for long-term strategic incremental change. Meanwhile, the current impulse by more agile nongovernmental or- ganizations, universities, and economic development groups is to create databases for storing Indigenous knowledge. Often these databases are de- signed to capture the medicinal properties of plants, characteristics of In- digenous (non-Western) communal societies, fragments of language, pho- tographs, and other artifacts. Of these kinds of projects, Indigenous peoples often remark, you cannot separate the part from the whole. The reductive work—the particularization—inherent to cataloging and classification can elide the many networks of associations—worlds of meaning—that make these artifacts sources of knowledge. As Oglala Lakota activist Russell Means warned attendees at the 2009 Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums, “You cannot put my grandmother in a box.”18 The question for us now, as researchers and practitioners in the field of knowledge organization is not, how do we fit more vanishing “Indians of North America” into the boxes we made for them, but rather, how do we create new spaces for Indigenous ontologies to emerge? What can we learn from their emergence? IMAGINING: CREATING SPACES FOR INDIGENOUS ONTOLOGIES Indigenous peoples reclaim ways of knowing by documenting and preserv- ing knowledge artifacts through library, museum, and archival practices, and through consistent interaction within tribal communities. Thus Indigenous peoples create multiple formal and informal spaces for learning and know- ing. In those spaces Indigenous peoples create new tools and adapt existing ones for their own benefit. Because such activity is so unexpected, many information professionals are unable to perceive these spaces and tools as innovative methods for connecting with, assembling, describing, organiz- ing, and accessing Indigenous knowledge. Meanwhile, as non-Indigenous knowledge organization practitioners begin to be aware of the value of or- ganizing Indigenous knowledge and making it accessible for the general public, they may start building systems, but without including Indigenous intellectual leaders in the design process. We join other Indigenous scholars asking, “What if we assumed, for a moment, that the practitioners of Indige- nous knowledge could somehow get into the design room for software, not as sources to be mined, but as epistemic partners?”19 In this section, we position ourselves as those Indigenous epistemic partners, imagining ways to support a vision of a bibliographic/indexing Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies 687 multiverse that incorporates the realities of Indigenous peoples’ approaches to knowledge, memory work, and ways of knowing. In addition to an at- tentiveness to cycles of colonialism, we carry a respect for the ways tribal peoples relate with their knowledge within their homelands, as well as a respect for how long and under what political and social conditions this process of relating takes place. To that end, we have defined imagining as a technique for others to consider. Imagining consists of creating figurative and literal spaces for the work of building, analyzing, and experimenting with Indigenous knowledge organi- zation. As a methodology, imagining is based on two decolonizing method- ologies: envisioning, and discovering the beauty of our knowledge. Envi- sioning is a strategy that “Indigenous peoples have employed effectively to bind people together politically ask[ing] that people imagine a future, that they rise above present-day situations which are generally depressing, dream a new dream and set a new vision.”20 Discovering the beauty of our knowledge refers to the processes in which Indigenous peoples focus on “making our knowledge systems work” for the benefit of their communi- ties.21 This involves sharing, as Indigenous peoples, what we know, under- standing how we know, and how our knowing shapes our relationships within our environments and through the categories we create. At present, many Indigenous peoples of North America are experiencing a resurgence of languages, cultural practices and artistic traditions, providing strong vi- sions and hope for the resiliency of their communities. This work is in that vein. As a technique, there is an order to imagining. First we have to open our awareness to how colonization works through subjugation of Indigenous documents and knowledge artifacts. Second, we have to identify and con- ceptualize the tools, techniques, values, institutions and processes that shape decolonization. Third, we have to build partnerships to spread awareness and acquire formal acknowledgment of the epistemic value of Indigenous knowledge in context. Fourth, we have to identify our Indigenous epistemic partners, those community members with deep domain knowledge essen- tial to the design of useful Indigenous ontologies. Finally, we have to free ourselves to create, as Indigenous thinkers, experimental designs and pilot systems, building our theoretical awareness of work in this area, so that we guide each other through the pitfalls of decolonizing knowledge organization efforts. Figure 1 depicts these stages as they relate to one another. The goal of imagining is to contribute to the groundwork of others who continue to build Indigenous knowledge systems toward decoloniza- tion. Make no mistake: imagining is a specific, difficult, laborious task. It requires seeing with fresh eyes, and thinking with a new mindset. It requires imagining Indigenous futures. The examples in the following sections reflect the second, third, fourth, and fifth stages, and help us learn about conditions shaping Indigenous knowledge organization work. 688 M. E. Duarte and M. Belarde-Lewis FIGURE 1 Stages in the Technique of Imagining. Identifying the Means to Decolonize through Digital Repositories A key task for Indigenous peoples seeking to break and resist the colonial cycle is to identify and conceptualize the tools, techniques, knowledge ar- tifacts and ways of knowing, values, institutions, and processes that shape decolonization. In the last decade, groups within tribes have been using social media and other digital repositories to do just this, connecting with each other after generations of forced separation, and collecting, naming, describing, and organizing documents and artifacts once thought lost. Cre- ating members-only spaces allows individuals to share sensitive documents, and relate what they know about content and provenance with each other in due time. For tribal peoples, this counteracts the particularization and ghet- toization that occurs through the spread of these documents in various state archives, libraries, and private collections. This awareness of wholeness, this restoration of otherwise fragmented tribal histories and ways of knowing, is foundational to the work of designing ontologies, and therein, intellectual decolonization. Here, we present two such cases: the Texas Band of Yaqui Indians Facebook page, and the Southern California Tribal Chairmen’s Asso- ciation Tribal Digital Village intranet. At present, Yaqui amateur archivists, historians, and genealogists are using Facebook to create a space for community interaction with historical materials. Members of the tribe opened an account in 2011, seeking to use Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies 689 it as a newsletter for Yaqui people living in many places, and also to assist the Texas Band in identifying and organizing the documents they need to acquire recognition from the state of Texas. The recognition process—which is the legal way that the U.S. gov- ernment and some state governments coordinate and communicate with sovereign tribes—requires that tribes produce documents demonstrating proof of an Indigenous (non-European) language, kinship, and residence on the land and deep history prior to the formation of the United States. Without recognition, it is very difficult, if not impossible, for tribes residing within U.S. borders to build their own social services programs and express their political and social needs with federal and state government agencies. Having no formal relationship with state institutions, both federally recog- nized and unrecognized tribes have to rely on homegrown archival and records management practices, sometimes in the hands of just one or two individuals, to keep track of integral tribal governmental (i.e., treaties, maps, and claims), historical, and cultural documentation. To this end, the site administrators began posting photographs, historical news articles, and genealogical records curated from their own research in various state archives. Sharing these documents online allows friends of the Texas Band of Yaqui Indians page to comment on documents, identify people in photographs, establish dates, and describe the events occurring in photos and articles. Connecting with each other has allowed tribal members to surface memories and stories about specific events and landscapes, and contributing to tribal memory of historical events. Officially, as a whole, the Yaqui people reside in many locations, with homelands stretching from the southwest United States into northwest Mex- ico. There is no official tribally sanctioned Yaqui historian or archivist, but rather many elders, historians, and spiritual leaders working in many locations—from Lubbock to Tucson to Hermosillo—to pass on Yaqui ways of knowing. Posting the documents online allows for community interaction independent of the physical proximity of tribal members. The status updates serve as entries in an archive accessible to tribal members linked to the page. Typically, site administrators post updates on the Western-oriented timeline that instead reflect Yaqui references for seasonal changes (i.e., activities for the month of August are actually corn, beans, and squash cultivation). Mem- bers also share the documents posted there within their own social media networks, including family members, friends, and related tribal and Indige- nous community groups. The process works toward decolonization—toward divesting U.S. and Mexico institutional authority over Yaqui histories and documents—as tribal members bring these documents back into their communities of origin, re- ducing the marginalization and diaspora of Yaqui materials previously misla- beled and lost in multiple state archives and library catalogs. While Facebook represents an unexpected tool and location for this activity to take place—a 690 M. E. Duarte and M. Belarde-Lewis mainstream American individual might be concerned about corporate own- ership, copyright, and redistribution of documents—from the experience of an Indigenous people, it also represents a tool that allows tribal peoples who have been forcibly disconnected with each other for generations to reconnect, and forge new relationships with each other, as well as articulate contemporary relationships with historical knowledge artifacts. It affords the Texas Band of Yaqui Indians the power to name, a first step in the design of a more formal organization method. At the same time, this activity represents an integral step toward state recognition, the collection of archival evidence for a report proving that Yaquis resided in what is now Texas prior to the formation of the United States. Hosting this archival process through Facebook allows the site ad- ministrators local control of a usable and familiar GUI with sufficient storage space and a sizable number of connected users, many of who submit more documents as they wish to eventually enroll as tribal members. For projects like these, tribal members often do not enjoy the privilege of being able to trust state libraries, museums, and archives because (1) activities are intended to occur only within the safety and privacy of the tribal community, meaning, closed to the general public; (2) activities in- volve posting sensitive images and documents online, which may challenge strict institutional intellectual property practices limiting redistribution and reproduction; (3) the tribe needs to maintain ownership of documents and copies, which may upset rules whereby state institutions maintain ownership over items; and (4) activities are designed to assist with state and/or federal recognition, a process that many states, state citizens, and state institutions oppose. (States often oppose recognition processes for tribes because it in- volves giving back large portions of land to tribes, including water, mineral, and hunting rights, as well as allowing another competitor for federal funds into the region.) At this point, if the site administrators need to take their group or select images offline, they can do so, and still retain the documents, lists of names, and knowledge they need for recognition as well as inter- nal tribal memory work and historical work. Ultimately, it is an ephemeral online archive—the physical documents exist elsewhere—but as a method for collecting, naming, and describing, it has a powerful social and political function. The Southern California Tribal Chairmen’s Association Tribal Digital Village intranet is another homegrown digital repository, built to support cultural revitalization. Lacking usable telecommunications and Internet in- frastructure in many of the 19 reservations, in the late 1990s tribal lead- ers representing the 19 tribes bordering San Diego County won a Hewlett Packard Digital Village grant to build out a community broadband network. Within this network, tribal community leaders designed a tribally owned and managed intranet, where members could share photos, stories, recipes, and other cultural and archival documents. This tribally owned intranet archive Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies 691 ensured tribal rights over the privacy, security, organization, and access to documents, an important feature given the overlapping waves of coloniza- tion that separated and silenced southern California tribal peoples into the mission system, resulting in major losses of homelands, languages, historical knowledge, and family connections. Ramesh Srinivisan, then a doctoral student in information science at the University of California Los Angeles, assisted elders and community mem- bers in designing an ontology based on Kumeyaay ways of knowing, and from there creating the locations within the intranet where members could post what they collected from their various communities.22 Through many iterations, the process of visiting with community members in different loca- tions, identifying and describing knowledge artifacts, discussing an ontology, designing the interface and the back end, and then encouraging its use not only resulted in a digital platform for preserving disparate documents; it also created a space for community members to outline their ways of knowing through discussion with each other, an important decolonizing intellectual project for any Indigenous people. While tribes like the Texas Band of Yaqui Indians are using Facebook to connect tribal members and archive tribal history, some tribes are still deciding how to approach social media use, especially when it comes to the need to safeguard their most private ceremonies.23 However, as Leech Lake Tribal College Librarian Gregory Chester points out, “we are at the beginning of a new era in knowledge organization, cataloging, and sharing . . . driven by rapid advances in knowledge, technology, and the increasing respect for and influence of Indigenous peoples.”24 He contends there is “ever-growing acceptance and use” of technology by an increasing number of tribal leaders, and that Indigenous groups are considering “what kind of change do we want and where do we want that change to take us.”25 The goal in many cases is to establish tribal command over the access and descriptive techniques of Indigenous knowledge artifacts. Our job as information professionals is to recognize the various forms knowledge organization work can take, and find ways to support these projects out of respect for the decolonizing and self-determination efforts of Indigenous communities. Representing Indigenous Epistemologies in Specialized Collections The level of work needed for Indigenous peoples to define their own episte- mological universe is significant. Some Indigenous peoples have been work- ing at it longer than others, and in partnership with state agencies, have developed mechanisms for folding Indigenous epistemologies into lesson plans, curricula, and even into state-level archival descriptive and cataloging practices. When states formally acknowledge the value of local Indigenous epistemologies, information professionals can then justify Indigenous knowl- 692 M. E. Duarte and M. Belarde-Lewis edge work through state institutions. This level of activity represents a third stage in the process of imagining: how can Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups build partnerships to spread awareness and acquire formal acknowl- edgment of the epistemic value of local Indigenous knowledge? Here, we present the examples of descriptive practices at the Alaska Native Languages Archive (ANLA), the development of the Brian Deer classification system, and for comparative purposes, the Maori Subject Headings project. The ANLA at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) Rasmuson Library “houses documentation of the various Native languages of Alaska and helps to preserve and cultivate this unique heritage for future generations.”26 The ANLA foregrounds the intellectual contribution of Native languages: “the collection has enduring cultural, historic, and intellectual value, particularly for Alaska Native language speakers and their descendants.”27 Collections Manager Stacey Baldridge created Preserving the Past: A Basic Handbook for Archiving in Rural Alaska, encouraging archivists to consult with tribal elders and elected officials around the naming and identification of documents and artifacts pertaining to Alaska Native communities. Baldridge states the importance of developing a flexible cataloging scheme for small archival collections that both complements the needs of the institution and is also legible for the local tribal community. To do this, Baldridge encourages the use of OCLC standards for creating records, but also emphasizes that community-based categories and descriptors may be the best fit for smaller tribal collections. It is important to note that the ANLA’s efforts reflect a statewide cul- ture of recognizing the epistemological and political legitimacy of Alaska Natives. Just this past year, in April 2014, lawmakers passed HB 216, for- mally recognizing Native languages as official languages of the state.28 While still symbolic in victory, the state acknowledgment of the wealth of Alaska Native ways of knowing contributes to a climate that Alaska Native peo- ples can maneuver in toward cultural revitalization, even in partnership with state institutions. Indeed, for over ten years, Alaska Native educators and fac- ulty worked hard to build the Alaska Native Knowledge Network (ANKN). The ANKN, also housed at the UAF, is “designed to serve as a resource for compiling and exchanging information related to Alaska Native knowledge systems and ways of knowing . . . a knowledge base that Alaska Natives have acquired through cumulative experience over millennia.”29 Including online lesson plans and webliographies, the ANKN encourages the use of Alaska Native knowledge in the areas of science, technology, language, art, sub- sistence foods, navigation, pedagogy, and includes select cultural resources of the seven major groups of Alaskan Natives, their respective tribes, and languages. What this example shows us is how, before state libraries and archives can develop the guidelines and techniques for naming and describ- ing Indigenous materials, there has to be a process for acknowledging that there is a value to the effort. The ANLA represents one of these efforts, not Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies 693 isolated, but preceded by years of prior work spreading awareness of the depth and range of Alaska Native ways of knowing. Focusing on smaller and specialized collections as a starting point for developing Indigenous knowledge organization systems is a logical step. Indeed, at the very basis of Indigenous thought is the understanding that In- digenous knowledges are place-based knowledges, best understood in the richness of context, through the use of Indigenous languages, and concep- tualized holistically. What this means is that, to some degree, collections of entirely Indigenous materials reflect Indigenous epistemologies when users are able to holistically view and browse these materials. While knowledge organization specialists in larger academic libraries, for example, may be concerned about the ghettoization of Indigenous materials by creating spe- cialized collections, Indigenous writers, thinkers, and educators may be more concerned that if they and their students are unable to assess as a whole the range and dynamic relationships between the materials of distinctive Indige- nous peoples, they may be missing key concepts, unable to identify gaps in collections, literature, and bodies of thought. Indeed, this was part of the challenge facing Brian Deer in the 1970s when he realized he was going to need to develop a more sophisticated and nuanced cataloging system for the small library of the National Indian Brotherhood—now Assembly of First Nations—in Canada. The collection of books and documents covered topics that continue to be of major signifi- cance for the Assembly of First Nations as they make political decisions shap- ing policy and practice in First Nations’ communities. Documents describing topics as integral as fishing, medicine, tribal law, and policy could not be described or collocated with sufficient specificity or accuracy according to an LC or Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system. Many Indigenous infor- mation professionals have observed how “the E schedules in LC classification are a dumping ground for all things Indian. Medicine, education, psychol- ogy? You won’t find material on those topics in the R, L, or BF schedules . . . because historic practice segregated us into a historic people.”30 Needing a system that worked, Deer created a simple, easy-to-use system in the English language based on First Nations topics of interest designated through literary warrant and also through Deer’s deep knowledge about First Nations his- tories, terminologies, and worldviews. Deer constructed specific cataloging systems for a number of smaller libraries, never seeking to build a universal system, but rather preserving the specificity of systems for particular Indige- nous locales. The Brian Deer Classification system is in use today in various forms in specialized collections throughout First Nations Canada. It inspires librarians and researchers supporting Indigenous knowledge organization.31 In some ways, because of exemplary systems like the Brian Deer sys- tem, there is a temptation to imagine constructing a Native North Amer- ican parallel to the LCSH, in which the range of Native North American epistemologies could be, in theory, reflected through a singular thesaurus. 694 M. E. Duarte and M. Belarde-Lewis In some parts of the world work of this magnitude is being accomplished. The Maori Subject Heading Project (MSHP) in Aotearoa/New Zealand repre- sents an example of an Indigenous knowledge organization system woven into the national library catalog. Librarians constructing the MSHP are adding Maori terms, and therein, perspectives, to existing records. This includes building authority files with Maori terms; instructions for faceting Western concepts (i.e., “myths and legends”) with Maori concepts (i.e., “history and genealogy”); instructions for marking Maori eras alongside Western histori- cal periodization; and rules for faceting records to include the perspectives of the relevant tribes or iwi elucidated in a document, each perspective, including the Western, being “equally valid.”32 However, what distinguishes this project from one that might be un- dertaken in North America is the political arrangement the Maori have within Aotearoa/New Zealand. The Treaty of Waitangi defines Aotearoa/New Zealand as a bicultural state, impressing upon all citizens the need to up- hold this dual complementarity. In the United States alone, there are over 600 tribes, 568 federally recognized, and each bearing their own treaty and recog- nition documents with regard to their responsibilities and rights as nations within the U.S. federal government. The diversity of Indigenous peoples, lan- guages, and epistemologies across Native North America is significant, and to be respected. In many ways, here in Native North America, the upsurge in support for Indigenous studies is part of the need to spread awareness of the value of distinctive and unique Indigenous epistemologies. Understand- ing these political and social distinctions—understanding how colonialism works—is essential for those seeking to establish projects spanning state institutions and Indigenous communities. Providing Deep Domain Knowledge through Storywork The fourth stage of imagining requires respecting that “the integrity of an Indigenous scheme is wholly dependent on the involvement of In- digenous peoples in its creation.”33 Identifying Indigenous epistemic part- ners, those community members with deep domain knowledge—is in- tegral to the design of Indigenous ontologies, definition of user needs, and training of non-Indigenous knowledge organization personnel. Reflect- ing on the sensations—the culturally shaped awareness of context and environment—that informs Native ways of knowing, Chester asks: How many of the catalogers at the Library of Congress have ridden horse- back with Jiccarilla Apache ranchers to check their fences, herded their cattle, or even attended their Go’jiaa ceremony in the fall. The classifier, of necessity, will largely shoot in the dark, guided by cataloging systems Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies 695 based on Aristotelian logic, views, and organizational systems, which may be anathema to the peoples for whom librarians are cataloging.34 Chester’s evocation reveals the need to include those with deep domain knowledge as epistemic partners in system design. Sometimes one has to experience first-hand that which he or she is cataloging in order to accurately represent it within a greater organizational system. But in the absence of lived experience, one of the main forms for impart- ing knowledge and ways of knowing in Indigenous communities is through story. Indigenous Oceania scholar Vicente Diaz has written about the naviga- tional technique “pookof,” used by South Pacific Islanders as “an inventory of creatures indigenous to a given island, as well as their travel habits and be- havior,” even how an island smells.35 The navigators familiar with an island’s pookof—and the narrative methods such as songs and storylines for recalling a specific taxonomy while sailing on the open ocean—know exactly where they are in the bodies of water and chains of islands, as well as how close they are to arriving at their destination. Stories and storywork provide the clues as to the dimensions of the ontological universe at play around Indige- nous documents and knowledge artifacts. In this section, we describe the kinds of contributions that happen through Indigenous storywork in tribal cultural resource centers—specifically through the Tamástslikt Cultural Insti- tute (TCI) in Pendleton, Oregon, and the Makah Cultural Research Center (MCRC) in Neah Bay, Washington—explaining how knowledge organization specialists need to be open to this kind of learning in order to understand experts with deep domain knowledge. For most tribal communities, there is not a requisite distinction between the inherent functions of tribal museums, libraries, and archives. Indeed, in many tribal communities, these institutions are bundled into single cultural resource centers, where they “can serve as a tool to reclaim practices based upon traditional values.”36 It is often up to the directors to decide how to organize the knowledge artifacts therein using a patchwork of systems. To prevent the particularization that occurs through uses of mainstream cata- loging practices, many tribal archive/library/museum directors rely on story- work to restore holism, and in so doing present the epistemic significance of documents and artifacts. The TCI in Pendleton, Oregon, acknowledges the deep impact of the Lewis and Clark expedition on the lives and history of the tribes living on the Umatilla Reservation. The Walla Walla, Cayuse, and Umatilla Natives are part of a history largely celebrated as a story of the “conquering of the West,” which began with the Lewis and Clark expedition. It is, for many, “an affirmation of the ‘pioneer spirit’ that makes America strong, while si- multaneously ignoring the stories, traditions, and ways of life of the many Native American tribes in the Pacific Northwest [who] were lost in the wake of the wave of immigrants who followed in Lewis and Clark’s footsteps.”37 696 M. E. Duarte and M. Belarde-Lewis Drawing on the strengths of Walla Walla, Cayuse, and Umatilla oral histories, the TCI draws the visitor into this parallel narrative without alienating those celebrating the accomplishments of Lewis and Clark. This approach allows visitors to appreciate the complex network of semiotic interactions that in- dicate an Indigenous understanding of histories of exploration, American settlement, and Native cultural revitalization. Storytelling draws visitors into the deep domain knowledge they need to make sense of discrete documents and artifacts, even those they may see elsewhere. The MCRC at Neah Bay also embraces this practice of presenting docu- ments and artifacts so that visitors can learn from immersion within a network of semiotic interactions. The MCRC houses a collection of archaeological materials from Ozette, one of the Makah’s ancestral villages. Makah tribal members supervised and participated in the excavation of the artifacts, and care for the collection. They labeled and categorized the artifacts by their Makah name in their language. They experience firsthand contact with the documents and artifacts they name, describe, and catalog, growing their own epistemological understanding as they do so. The MCRC is engaging in an act of decolonization, an act that includes the work of Indigenous peoples taking the lead in discovering the beauty of their knowledge many times in partnership with non-Indigenous allies.38 While all libraries, archives, and museums experience a tension between storing and cataloging their collections and providing accurate interpretation and access to the materials, this tension is amplified in tribal cultural resource centers as they balance the need to interpret history and contemporary re- alities for non-Indigenous visitors while still remaining relevant to the tribal community. Understanding and including Indigenous and Western perspec- tives in the cataloging, arrangement, and presentation of materials is an important lesson for those seeking to support Indigenous knowledge orga- nization. Both the TCI and the MCRC are employing the strengths of their communities, specifically the deep domain knowledge afforded through sto- rywork, as they embed Indigenous knowledge systems into their practice. These cases reveal to us how embedded within Indigenous oral histories and storytelling are the very associations that can teach knowledge organiza- tion specialists how to describe and collocate materials to present Indigenous peoples’ experiences. Experts with deep domain knowledge can ask, what if we were to design a scheme based on peoplehood, the interrelated concepts of land, language, ceremonial cycle, and sacred history, a conceptual frame- work integral to understanding Native systems of knowledge?39 They can imagine a system based on Diné language and ways of knowing, Marianas Islanders’ way of knowing the inventory of their oceanscapes, or Puebloan histories over the longue durée. As we open up to the contours of deep domain knowledge and story- work, imagining the possibilities available to us, it is important to be cog- nizant of Meyer’s words, that we are the same, differently; and to embrace Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies 697 how those differences reveal the richness of knowledges and categories of thought specific to our geographic locations. Jicarilla Apache philosopher Cordova described these geographic locations as bounded space, a physical location delineated by natural lines created by rivers, lakes, plains, deserts, and mountains occupied by a group of people for generations.40 The knowl- edge developed over time is a result of an ongoing, dynamic relationship be- tween people and place, and reflects the unique methods we as Indigenous peoples have respectively created to make sense of our bounded spaces. Understanding place-based ontologies provides insight into the naming and organizing of knowledge specific to any given community. The respect for bounded spaces, deep domain knowledge, storywork, and Indigenous ex- pertise are integral to the work of creating Indigenous knowledge systems. Designing Systems, Contributing to Theory Finally, after all of this conceptual work, as Indigenous thinkers we have to free ourselves to create experimental designs and pilot systems, building our theoretical awareness, so that we can continue to guide each other through the pitfalls of decolonizing knowledge organization efforts. Practitioners will by now have noted that the aforementioned examples represent projects that take place to a great extent outside of state-funded library institutions, and depend on skillsets beyond formal cataloging training. Indeed this is so. In- digenous approaches to naming, describing, and organizing documents and various knowledge artifacts represent, in the majority of cases, an ontological alternative to standard cataloging and classification practice. For this reason, as information scientists with advanced methodological training, we can support the work of designing more sensitive and nuanced systems as a mode of scholarship. Methods include, first, descriptive case studies of existing Indigenous approaches to the range of knowledge orga- nization work; second, comparative case studies of various approaches and objectives; and third, development of experimental schemes. As scientists, we want to understand how Indigenous knowledge work, in terms of cat- egorization, methods of association and relatedness, processes of naming and describing, boundaries between privileged and public knowledges, and goals and outcomes of designing and implementing integral tools, processes, and schemes. Scholars in the field are already pursuing this as an area of theoretical information scientific work. Doyle’s theoretical framework, Indigenous knowledge organization at Cultural Interface, is an example of how scholarly attentiveness to Indige- nous epistemologies contributes to information scientific understanding of the limits and possibilities within the practice of knowledge organization.41 Interviewing experts in Indigenous knowledge organization gave Doyle the insights to identify the theoretical decisions designers contend with as they 698 M. E. Duarte and M. Belarde-Lewis design systems appropriate for connecting Indigenous materials with In- digenous communities. Doyle has written extensively on the strengths and challenges around using the Brian Deer system at Xwi7xwa Library (pro- nounced whee-whaa), particularly when systems are anticipated to grow and be accessible, and are adjacent to or will eventually merge with a larger system, such as a university library system.42 Chester’s detailed comparative analysis of LCSH, DDC, and the Brian Deer system revealed that “any new systems that would replace or enhance the current systems would need the following qualities: cultural appropri- ateness, adaptability, simplicity, speed of writing, understandability, and ex- pandability.”43 Chester’s work allows us to imagine local possibilities for cataloging, classifying, and arranging literary, aesthetic, and oral history col- lections that encourage and ensure these qualities. Dr. Cheryl Metoyer worked with the Mashantucket Pequot Nation to develop a thesaurus that reflects an Indigenous ontology centered around the physical, mental, spiritual, and social; a design intended for use in the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center. What Dr. Metoyer’s work provides for us is a working model of one of the aforementioned visions of an Indigenous knowledge organization system, one out of poten- tially 600 distinctive systems designed for use in a specific tribal community. David George-Shongo, Seneca Nation archivist, encourages appropriate access, acknowledging the needs of the community instead of the open access championed by the mainstream information field.44 Allison B. Krebs, Anishinaabe information scientist, worked tirelessly on teaching others about proper protocols for treating Native American archival materials, particularly sacred and legal documents, such as the birch bark scrolls of the Anishinaabe peoples of the Great Lakes. The scrolls are documents that embody spiritual power, as well as record treaty rights for present day Chippewa, Ojibwe, and Anishinaabe peoples. What these scholars’ research has in common is a singular impulse to center Indigenous experience and ways of knowing as a reason in and of itself for developing new or enhanced methods of knowledge organization. These researchers worked conscientiously with Indigenous practitioners to develop systems for increasing flows of accurately named and described Indigenous knowledge for Indigenous community use. By building on the work of these and other scholars, we can continue to develop participa- tory methods that contribute to the important work of understanding In- digenous knowledge organization. Ultimately, we want to be able to pro- pose specifications or constraints for the practice of Indigenous knowledge organization. Another area of work that we can breathe into has to do with practicing building systems based on Native ways of knowing. A common challenge in the field generally revolves around dealing with expansion of the top- ics in the literary corpus that shaped the initial design of schemes. Just as Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies 699 many librarians acknowledge the anachronism of the DDC, so do Indigenous librarians recognize the limitations of the Brian Deer system. This is not be- cause the Brian Deer system is inaccurate, but rather that it was designed to be local and specific. Since the time of its initial design, the number of Native and Indigenous authors, scholars, researchers and theorists—and the ideas and topics they have inscribed—has grown exponentially. Also, different groups in different locations are seeking to modify the system for the spe- cific community needs. Indeed, librarians at the recently constructed Aanis- chaaukamikw Cree Cultural Institute within the Cree nation of Eeyou Istchee are seeking the expertise of librarians who can help modify the system to accommodate not only James Bay Cree ways of knowing, but also all other Quebec Aboriginal and Inuit groups.45 Within the subfield of Indigenous knowledge organization, we consistently ask, how do we accommodate the breadth of Indigenous thought in our library, museum, and archival collec- tions? Practice, experimentation, identifying commonalities and specificities, and sharing our results are essential aspects to this ongoing work. CONCLUSION: “UNIVERSALITY IN THE SPECIFICITY” When we understand how colonization works through techniques of re- ducing, mis-naming, particularizing, marginalizing, and ghettoizing, we can better appreciate practices that more accurately and precisely name, describe, and collocate historically subjugated knowledge. In this article we gave ex- amples revealing why and how tribal peoples need to be able to command the tools and techniques for building relationships with their knowledge ar- tifacts toward decolonization. We described how state institutions need to acknowledge the inherent epistemological distinctiveness and value of lo- cal Indigenous epistemologies prior to setting up collaborative projects. We wrote about how knowledge organization specialists must be willing to part- ner with Native and Indigenous communities and listen to the stories that give meaning to the naming, describing, and organization of documents. Respect for Indigenous holism, political realities, long-term relationship-building, and patience with timelines are essential. Willingness to study Native systems of knowledge in context, to write about them, and to design experimental ap- proaches is integral to shaping the theory that will inform practice. Those who wish to contribute to this area of work, especially in the Native Ameri- can context, must have an understanding of self-determination, sovereignty, autonomy, and decolonization, or, in other words, the values and rules of law and governance in Indian Country. Each of these represents a door- way into the work of imagining Indigenous ontologies, and how and where these take shape. We will know that a library or museum has been decol- onized when Indigenous patrons can both see their experiences reflected therein, and also identify foundational Indigenous epistemologies at play. As 700 M. E. Duarte and M. Belarde-Lewis information professionals we should challenge ourselves to create systems that encourage flows of Indigenous knowledge for and within Indigenous communities. As we experience how we are the same, differently, we can more fully appreciate how our unique ways of knowing inform and trans- form our responsibilities as facilitators of knowledge work. 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Alaska Native Language Archive, “About the Archive,” Alaska Native Language Archive at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, last updated September 30, 2013, http://www.uaf.edu/anla/about/ 27. Ibid. 28. Casey Kelly, “Alaska Becomes Second State to Recognize Indigenous Languages,” KTOO News, April 21, 2014, http://www.ktoo.org/2014/04/21/alaska-native-languages-bill-passes-15-hour-sit/ 29. Sean Topkok, “About ANKN,” Alaska Native Knowledge Network at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, last modified June 9, 2014, http://www.ankn.uaf.edu/About.html 30. Webster and Doyle, “Don’t Class Me in Antiquities,” 189. 31. Isaac Gilman, “From Marginalization to Accessibility: Classification of Indigenous Materials,” Faculty Scholarship at Pacific University Libraries (2006), http://commons.pacificu.edu/libfac/6 32. Ibid., 30; Robyn East, Indigenous Subject Access/Nga Upoko Tukutuku: Maori Subject Headings, Presentation at the 23rd ANTZLA Conference, Wellington, New Zealand, 2008. 33. 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