WRTG: Native Americans Research

Native Americans: Authenticity & Accomodation

Geronimo Geronimo's "Cadillac"

IC Library Print & Media Resources
Recommended Databases (Articles)
Web Resources
Citation Help

IC Library Print & Media Resources

Subject Searches in the IC Library Catalog

Recommended Databases (Articles)

ArticleLinker

Most of the IC Libary databases listed below contain only some full text. If the article you want is not availabe full text from the database you are searching, check below the citation for one of the images above. This is ArticleLinker and if available it will search a wide range of other IC Library databases, retrieving links to any full text it finds.

Recommended Databases

JSTOR & Project Muse :

JSTOR is a large database of 100% full text scholarly literature and on the subject of Native Americans it can retrieve articles from across the entire 20th and 19th centures--and even back to the late 18th century. But there is no Subject searching available here--just Keyword searching of all that full text. So you need to experiment with what combination of keywords and phrases (put phrases in quotation marks) works best at focusing your results. AND KEEP IN MIND: the indigenous people of America have only been referred to as "Native Americans" for about the last 40 years. Articles before then will speak of "Indians" or "American Indians" or "North American Indians" etc.

Although a smaller database, Project Muse complements JSTOR. LIke JSTOR it provides 100% full text of mostly scholarly journals, but its coverage is entirely current--mainly spanning the last 10-15 years. Although all articles in Porject Muse are assigned Library of Congress Subject Headings, you cannot enter a Subject search as such. Your options are to "Browse Subject Headings" to the right of the search slots or enter a Subject Heading in the "All fields except text" field.

Note: There are a lot of book reviews in scholarly journals, so for both JSTOR and Project Muse it's a good idea to check the box below the search slots that will limit your search to just "articles." Otherwise the articles may be buried by reviews of books on your topic.

ProQuest Research Library : Click "Continue" on the first screen and at the search interface click on "More Search Options" on the lower left to see all your input options. "Native Americans" is the main Subject Heading" used here, and it can be combined with other Subjects such as "Education" or "Land" or "Religion" or with specific Keywords such as "Cayugas" or "vision quest."
     Note: to run a Subject search on a particular tribe, you must enter the tribe's name in the "Company/Org" search slot: Apache Tribe, Mohawk tribe, Oneida Tribe, etc.

General OneFile : Run a search on the Subject Heading "Native Americans" and scroll down the page to see if any of the--mostly regional--Headings is more pertinent to your needs. Also open the "Related Subjects" link and scan that extensive list to see if one of these provides better focus. If not, open the "Subdivisions" link and take advantage of this faceted approach: "Civil rights," "Economic aspects," "Health aspects," "Laws," "Political aspects," "Rites, Ceremonies," and "Social aspects," to name only a few.

Academic Search Premier : For a preview of all the specific Subject Headings available here, click on "Subject Terms" above the search slots and put "Indians of North America" in the Subject slot--that's the lower of the two slots there. This will bring up a list of all the available subheadings in alphabetical order. And note that by double clicking on these headings you can "explode" them--that is, open a list of related terms. And also note: in this database "Native American" is only used in a few Subject Headings such as "Native Americans in Motion Pictures" and "Native Americans on Television."

   ATLA religion database with ATLASerials : Our religion and theology database. To browse the Subject Headings available here, click on "Indexes" above the search slots and select "Subjects ALL" from the drop-down menu. In particular, browse the Headings beginning with Indians of North America, including Indians of North America--Religion.

     ScienceDirect : Dont't be misled by the name--this also covers the Social Sciences. Because it’s a large database with a great deal of full text, the absence of Subject searching means that your Keyword searches will often retrieve large sets of articles, many of which mention but don’t discuss your search term(s). One way around this is to limit your initial search to the “Abstract Title Keyword” field. Once you have found an article that sounds on-target, click the “Related Articles” link beneath the citation. This will open a range of articles on the same topic. For instance, try "native american*" in the Abstract Title Keyword field (the * is the truncation symbol here: American* retrieves both American and Americans). Hundreds of articles on a wide range of Native American topics are retrieved.

   LexisNexis Academic :

News: Our best national, international, and local newspaper coverage--100% full text. Don't settle for the default "Easy Search"--choose "News" at the lower left and then "All News." Then change the default "Everywhere" search to "Headline & Lead" (otherwise a keyword searche of full text will retrieve too many irrelevant hits). Even more effective at targeting articles where your topic is discussed, not simply mentioned, is to use the "at least 5 occurrences" option from the drop-down menu to the right of each search slot. This guarantees that your search will retrieve only articles in which your terms are used at least 5 times--an indication that they constitute a main topic.Use "Specify date" to select a time range also helps narrow your results. Also be aware that by clicking on the "Sources" at the bottom left, then choosing "Browse Sources" and opening the "News" folder, you can access an alphabetical list of individual news sources that includes every state. By checking boxes you can compare how an issue is covered in, say, Vermont versus Alabama.
Law Reviews: If you click on the “US Legal” button at the left of the LexisNexis home page and then choose "Law Reviews", you can search these excellent resources for articles discussing Native American rights, legal status, and tribal law. The search is Keyword of 100% full text and often your retrieval sets will be large. A good way to focus your results is to use the “at least 5 occurrences” option from the drop down menu to the right of the search slots. This will guarantee that your search terms occur at least 5 times in all the articles retrieved—indicating a main topic.

    Ethnic Newswatch : This database covers many Native American newspapers and periodicals that are available nowhere else--and most with full text. Click "continue" on the first screen. One way to begin is to click on "Topics" and enter "Native Americans" and scan some of the broad Subject searches available.  But--for all the most recent articles the Subject heading used here is "Native North Americans." Just add some Keywrods for focus. Also note: below the search slots you can set an "Ethnic Group" limit to "Native People," but be aware that this includes indigenous people throughout the world.

   New York Times (1851-2009) gives access to the full text of the New York Times 1851-2006. Click the "Continue" button and at the home page reset the default search of "citation and document text" to "citation and abstract" (since this is a Keyword search of 100% full text, you are likely to generate too many passing mentions of your search terms if you search all the text; first try the more focused "citation and abstract" search and only broaden it to "document text" if you retrieve too few hits).
     Use the "date range" limits to target the primary sources available here--contemporary/eyewitness reports. Without a date range limit you may retrieve hundreds of articles written decades after the events they discuss. For example, a search on "Geronimo" with a date range limit of 1880-1909 will target the Time's original coverage of Geronimo's career (though be sure to add "Apache" in this case, since there are other people and places with the same name).
   User Advisory: when searching for materials from earlier eras, be aware that language changes over time. For example, the term "Native Americans" was not used prior to the 1970s, so when searching for articles the term "Indians" will be needed to retrieve relevant newspaper stories.

   AnthroSource : A good full text resource for this subject area, but only a Keyword search option. Be sure to click on "Advanced Search" for a little more flexibility in how you can enter and combine search terms.

    Philosopher's index : A surprising number or hits if you search Native American as a Subject.

America: History and Life : A large scholarly database, with much of the full text supplied by JSTOR, but the advantage to searching here is the availability of Subject searching and an "Historical Period" limit. That said, the Subject Heading used is broad--Indians--so you will need to add more specific Keywords. But whereas the date limit in most databases refers to the date articles were published, the "Historical Period" limit available here allows you to target the period of time discussed in the article. And while the emphasis here is on "History," if you set the date range to 2005-2011, you will retrieve hundreds of articles with at least one foot in the present. Note: setting the "Document Type" to "Article" will winnow out all the reviews and book citations.

   CQ Researcher : each issue is entirely devoted to a social/political/public policy issue of the day. For this topic you might want to look at a fairly recent issue (2006) titled "American Indians" (and note, this was updated in August 2010).

Contact Us

Brian Saunders

Humanities Librarian

(607) 274-1198

More of Brian's guides

Dashboard

Article QuickSearch

Related Guides

And Don't Just Take My Word For It . . .

Check out our Social Science Librarian John Hendrson's Native American Studies guide.

Web Resources

Selected Sites

WWW Virtual Library--American Indians: Scroll down to the table of contents and its helpful resource categories.

Native American Resources: from the UCLA Center for Multilingual, Multicultural Research.

Native American History & Culture: An enormous set of links, but broadly organized by headings.

Native Languages of the Americas provides a gateway not only to online language resources, but also Native American Cultures and Native American Myths & Legends.

Researching Native American Legal Issues: A few paragraphs containing links to a wide range of legal resources.

Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development: There's a wealth of linked publications here. For a sense of the range, click on "Publications & Research" and choose "Publications Search." Note the drop-down menu of tribes to select from. And note that you can choose a "Type" of resource ("Field Reports" seem especially plentiful).

Native Americans and the Environment: Internet Resources: good set of categorized links to a wide range of environmental issues especially relevant to native Americans.

Tribal Court Clearinghouse: Be sure to visit the "Federal Law," "State Law," and "Topics" headings at the top, as well as the Quick Links along the right margin.

American Indians and Crime: Report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

National Congress of American Indians: See especially the "Policy Issues" link at the top.

Indian Country Today: A widely circulated weekly publication of current Native American news and events.

National Indian Law Library: Resources by Topic: from the Native American Rights Fund, the topic categories are what make this gateway so potentially useful.

NativeWeb: Resource Categories: The scope here is wide--Indigenous Cultures around the World--but there are plenty of links to Native American resources. Use the topical categories (notice the one for "Activism) and if you want to zero in on a particular tribe or region use the Nations Index or the Geographic Region Index on the left.

USA.gov: For Tribal Governments and Native Americans: A categorized gateway to online government resources.

U.S. Department of the Interior: Indian Affairs: Use the "Choose a Service" drop-down menu on the right to target a particular aspect of Indian Affairs: Economic, Education, Gaming, etc.

Native Sites: A gateway to online resources by tribe, from the Cradleboard teaching project.

What's Happening in Indian Country: From Syracuse University's College of Law, online materials focusing on New York State issues.

Native American/American Indian: Links from the Humanities directory Voice of the Shuttle.

Web Directories

Web Directories differ from search engines like Google in that all the online resources have been selected and annotated by editors, thereby promising a much higher degree of quality control. The two best should prove useful in their categorization of Native American resources:

Open Directory Project: Native Americans: Look especially at the subdivisions available under "Arts and Culture" and "Issues and Activism."
IPL2: Native American: Gateway of links from the Internet Public Library.

Print Reference Resources

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy REF B51 .R68 1998 “Native American Philosophy”
Man, Myth & Magic REF BF1407 .M34 1997 search by tribe
Encyclopedia of Religion REF BL31 .E46 1986 by tribe—Iroquois—or subject—Shamanism
New Catholic Encyclopedia REF BX841 .N44 2003 articles under “Mission”
Racial and Ethnic Relations in America REF E49 .R33 2000
Encyclopedia of American Indian Contributions to the World REF E54.5 .K46 2002
Encyclopedia of North American Indians REF E76.2 .E53 1996
Chronology of Native North American History REF E77 .C555 1994
Gale Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes REF E77 .G35 1998
Handbook of North American Indians REF E77 .H25
Native American Almanac REF E77 .H59 1993
Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas REF E77 .N63 1996
Notable Native Americans REF E89 .N67 1995
Encyclopedia of American Indian Costume REF E98 .C8 P37 1994
Encyclopedia of American Shamanism REF E98 .M4 L98 1998
Statistical Record of Native North Americans REF E98 .P76 S73
Encyclopedia of Native American Religions REF E98 .R3 H73 2000
Dictionary of American History REF E174 .D52 1976 “Indian, American—Native Cultures”
American Folklore: An Encyclopedia REF GR101 .A54 1996 “Native American Folklore”
International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences REF H40 .A2 I5 “Indians, North American”
Encyclopedia of Native American Legal Tradition REF KF8204 .E53 1998
Dictionary of Art REF N31 .D5 1996 “Native North American Art”
Dictionary of Native American Literature REF PM155 .D53 1994
Native American Literatures REF PS153 .I52 W47 1999

Citation Help

Noodlebib

Noodlebib guides you through the required data entry for citation in the MLA, APA, and Chicago/Turabian styles. It takes care of punctuation, alphabetization and formatting, producing a polished source list for import into Word.

MLA "Cite LIke the Devil" Guides

MLA citation for books: in print, from databases, on the Web
MLA citation for articles: in print, from databases, on the Web.
MLA citation for Web and Multimedia resources, including Web sites, movies, DVDs, CDs, and videos.
MLA in-text (parenthetical) citation (far less satanic than the first three).