First Nations Education Guide for Graduate Students

Keyword searching is the most common search strategy when doing research; when doing research about First Nations Peoples, it's important to recognize the many ways -- past and present -- writers describe topics, issues, and groups of people. A simple keyword search for 'Indian' may pull up some older records referring to American Indians, but most of the results would probably be related to peoples from India. Keep in mind the following variety of terms:

• American Indian
• Native American
• First Nations
• Indigenous

This gets even more granular when we're looking at a particular group of people such as a tribe or clan. For example, Ojibwa has different spelling variations depending on location and linguistic dialect. You also have to consider that indexes may use the anglicized version of a tribe versus the preferred name of a people or tribe; for instance, Chippewa is the anglicized name for the Anishinaabe people.

• Chippewa, Chippeway -- the approximate French pronunciation of "Ojibwa" and still commonly used
• Ojibwa, Ojibway, and Ojibwe -- various spellings for "Ojibwa"
• Anishinaabe -- preferred name of the tribe meaning "the people" or "the original people"

1. Search by searching using any details you have about the article, especially the DOI, title, author, or journal name.

2. In the search results, select the article title. Then scroll down or select Details to confirm it's the one you're looking for.

3. If you don't see it near the top of the list, try narrowing your results by choosing Articles or Newspapers search under Resource Type.
   

4. Still can't find it? Click “Expand your search to include items you can request from other libraries” above the results list. This shows articles we don’t have immediate access to, but you can request them for free.