INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE AND CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE

METHODS IN INFORMATION RESEARCH1

Katherine Becvar2 and Ramesh Srinivasan3

Research and professional practice in librarianship has increasingly turned to com-

munity-focused information services (CIS), which allow people to participate in
creating and sharing information about themselves and their communities. These
information services have a great potential to empower and engage marginalized
communities; however, in this article we argue that current methods used in libraries
for creating CIS resources face a significant omission—they fail to account for
cultural differences in how information circulates within communities, which is
particularly relevant for many indigenous communities that maintain established
hierarchies that dictate appropriate ways for cultural information to be shared.
Often these culturally based hierarchies of access are directly in tension with some
of the underlying principles of librarianship that place high value on free and
equitable access to information. Given this tension, we extend existing research on
CIS to propose a model for developing CIS that has collaborative and culturally
sensitive research methods at its center.

Introduction

Research and professional practice in librarianship has increasingly turned

to the study and deployment of community-focused information services
(CIS), which combine the library’s long-standing role as a resource for
providing information that serves local communities with the use of new

1. The authors are indebted to their colleagues Jim Enote, Dan Simplicio, Kellen Shelendewa,
Michael Christie, Helen Verran, Kim Christen, Juan Salazar, and Faye Ginsburg for their
insights, without which they could not have developed this article.
2. Researcher, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California,
Los Angeles, 300 Young Drive North, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1520; Telephone 310-206-8320;
E-mail katherine.becvar@gmail.com.
3. Associate professor, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of
California, Los Angeles, 300 Young Drive North, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1520; Telephone
310-206-8320; E-mail srinivasan@ucla.edu.

[Library Quarterly, vol. 79, no. 4, pp. 421–441]

2009 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
0024-2519/2009/7904-0002$10.00

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media technologies that have made it easy for people to participate in

creating and sharing content about themselves and their communities
[1–3]. Such examples as NorthStarNet (linking Chicago’s sprawling sub-
urbs), Atención San Miguel (a community newsletter for San Miguel de
Allende, Mexico), and the Bethlehem (Pennsylvania) Digital History Pro-
ject, as well as examples detailed in the first part of the next section, all
show the potential for public libraries to actively position themselves as a
vital resource for local and community-oriented information [4], infor-
mation that is often aimed at serving underrepresented groups within
culturally and ethnically diverse populations [5–6]. These information ser-
vices not only can provide marginalized communities with information
that can serve their local needs (covering such topics as housing, citizen-
ship, jobs, cultural heritage, and more) but also can empower communities
by teaching information literacy and basic media production, both of which
can be catalysts for enhancing education, confidence, and community de-
cision making [7–10].
In this article we argue that, although they are admirable and often
effectively deployed, current methods used in libraries for creating CIS
resources face a significant omission—they fail to account for important
cultural differences in the understandings around how information cir-
culates within communities. This is a particularly relevant issue for many
indigenous communities that maintain established hierarchies that dictate
appropriate ways for cultural information to be shared and accessed
[11–13]. Because these culturally based hierarchies of access to certain
domains of cultural knowledge are often determined by an individual’s
gender, age, ancestry, clan, and status, they are directly in tension with
some of the underlying principles of librarianship that place a high value
on free and equitable access to information. We elaborate on this point
below [14, 15]. Given this tension, we focus this article on extending ex-
isting research on CIS to recognize such cultural differences within indig-
enous communities. This article will describe our own research with the
Zuni Native American tribe that has brought these issues to the forefront.
It will also present the insights of researchers developing similar projects
around the world as we propose a model for developing CIS that further
accounts for cultural differences in how information circulates. The model
we propose, having collaborative and culturally sensitive research methods
at its center, can enable the important growth of CIS research and practice
to account for cultural complexity and to consider issues of circulation
and hierarchy within principles of public librarianship and service out-
reach. While the focus of our model is aimed at CIS projects being created
in collaboration with indigenous groups in particular, many of the points
in our model are also relevant for CIS being developed with other mar-
ginalized, culturally diverse populations.
 INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE 423

Background

Defining Community Information Services

The ideology and practice of service has long been a central part of the
professional identity of librarians [5, 16, 17]—put simply, librarians serve
library users by providing access to information resources within the li-
brary’s collection [18]. Recent technological advances have altered the
emphasis of libraries from being storehouses of resources in book form
toward increasingly acting as gateways to local, regional, and global online
information resources [19, 20]. Many public libraries have a history of
working to organize, promote, and preserve community-oriented infor-
mation of many types, including that regarding health care, housing, social
services, employment opportunities, and transportation, as well as local
heritage and history, community events, and recreation [4]. Joan C. Durr-
ance and Karen E. Pettigrew define “community information” (CI) as ev-
eryday information that “helps people cope with the problems of daily
living and facilitates community participation” [2, p. v], and they describe
the important role that libraries have in gathering and providing CI. Tech-
nological innovations also play an important part here—as people become
aware of the shortcomings of massive global information providers like
Google, the library is uniquely positioned to tailor information resources
around local issues and circumstances [4, 20]. Furthermore, networking
technologies that facilitate social connectedness, such as discussion boards,
blogs, and wikis, have blossomed recently, and because of their increasing
ease of implementation and use, they are a logical tool for creating CIS
resources [2, 21].
Many examples of locally oriented CIS projects implemented by libraries
demonstrate the potential for successfully engaging community members
in both creating and making use of locally oriented information resources.
PictureAnnArbor [22] is a project sponsored by the Ann Arbor District
Library that encourages community members to share images and docu-
ments, both historic and current, that relate to everyday life in Ann Arbor
and allows other members of the community to comment on the photos
and share their expertise about local history. SkokieNet [23], hosted by
the Skokie (llinois) Public Library, is an information portal that permits
any community member to submit entries about news, photos, local history,
and many other topics. Interestingly, SkokieNet also features resources for
new immigrants as well as sections specifically oriented to particular ethnic
communities in Skokie (Asyrrian, Indian, Korean, etc.). In addition to
providing essential information on such topics as housing, jobs, and child
care, CIS resources are also frequently organized around preserving and
promoting cultural and ethnic heritage and serving marginalized com-
munities wanting to participate in cultural revitalization efforts [8–10].
424 THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY

Public libraries are often charged with creating CIS, with the reasoning
that they facilitate civic engagement and local political participation. There
is an important relationship between the government’s support of libraries
with public funding and the expectation that the public library is respon-
sible for providing relevant, often locally oriented, information to their
constitutencies [7]. In the United States, public libraries have been viewed
as important foundations for democracy, and librarians have long asserted
that freedom of access to information is an important precondition of our
First Amendment rights of freedom of speech [24]. Access has been defined
as “the ease with which a person may enter a library, . . . use its resources,
and obtain needed information regardless of format” [25]—in other words,
providing access is a key component of the service that libraries provide.
Librarians thus maintain important ethical codes that resist any kind of
restriction on the information in their collections [24], and these profes-
sional codes of ethics are founded on the liberal ideals of intellectual free-
dom that underpin the Western academic tradition [26]. The ideals that
privilege free and open access to information are invisibly embedded and
implicit in the professional practice of librarians [27, 28]. Accordingly, as
we argue in the following section, librarians are rarely equipped with meth-
ods to develop CIS resources that are able to capture differences in the
protocols around the sharing of cultural information, a key issue for many
indigenous groups.

A Critique of Methods for Developing Community Information Services

Responding to increased public attention to issues of diversity and multi-
culturalism, libraries are starting to address inequalities in the patterns of
use and the usefulness of library services to diverse social groups [29, 30].
Increasingly, library staff recognize that their users belong to heteroge-
neous groups with diverse needs and radically different contexts surround-
ing their information use or lack thereof [30, 31]. Librarians are well aware
that segments of marginalized groups do not make use of library services
to the extent that librarians want them to do so [32], but uncovering what
those barriers are and how to overcome them to engage diverse audiences
in different ways is a challenge to which much research in LIS has recently
been devoted [30]. In some communities, libraries are responding by cre-
ating CIS, often relying on emerging technologies, which provide com-
munities with innovative ways of discussing their priorities, issues, assets,
and cultural values in ways that encourage widespread participation, sup-
port social connectedness, and aim to improve the quality and content of
people’s lives [1, 8–10, 31].
A widely used method for developing CIS in libraries is community
analysis, which combines quantitative analysis (using demographic and
survey-based numerical data) with qualitative analysis (based on descriptive
 INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE 425

data from historical documents, newspaper articles and occasional inter-

views) [33, 34]. Community analysis is intended to be a systematic process
for collecting data about the library and its surrounding environment [35],
yet its emphasis on demographics and documentation, rather than wide-
scale community interviews or collaborative research practices, makes it
an insufficient method for revealing important cultural differences around
information sharing and use. For example, Jo Haight Sarling and Debra
S. Van Tassel relied upon community analysis to develop a series of rec-
ommendations for new library services for an ethically diverse neighbor-
hood in Denver, relying on scanty interviews with leaders from business
and community organizations and so-called drive-arounds of the neigh-
borhood to supplement the quantitative demographic data they gathered
from the U.S. Census [35]. Edward G. Evans also demonstrates a preference
for demographic data in his recommendations for performing community
analysis for library planning, stating that “informal” data collecting (i.e.,
interviewing community members or involving community groups in the
research process) is “too random to provide assurance that the data are
accurate” [36, p. 23]. As Mindy Whipple and James N. Nyce observe, com-
munity analysis practiced in this numbers-oriented way fails to capture a
holistic picture of the “social process in which information and information
use coincide” [37, p. 696]—the sort of holistic picture that would be much
better captured by using ethnographic methods, which allow for more
reflexivity and collaboration in the research practice [38–40]. Despite its
high degree of usefulness in developing projects that directly engage multi-
cultural publics in developing relevant library services, ethnography has
yet to be widely adopted across qualitative LIS research [5, 37]. However,
as we point out in the next part of this article, simple grassroots ethno-
graphic research is, by itself, insufficient for overcoming existing inade-
quacies in understanding cultural differences. The model outlined later
in the article responds to this by arguing for the marriage of local eth-
nographies with an ethical framework focused on hierarchies and circu-
lation in CIS projects.
Action-based methods (also sometimes called participatory methods) are
another strategy that is often used to develop CIS [1, 30, 31]. In partici-
patory action research, those who had once been called the research “sub-
jects” are instead given active roles as equal collaborators in the research
process, with the intention of developing meaningful enterprises and out-
comes from the research [7, 40–43]. For example, the Afya project in
Illinois has focused on developing community health and wellness infor-
mation resources for African American women by using participatory meth-
ods and by establishing strategic alliances between libraries and community
organizations, taking advantage of social technologies and digital tools [1].
Action-oriented research methodologies and frameworks, applied to li-
426 THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY

brary-oriented research, hold great potential for addressing the margin-

alization of underserved populations and for working toward social justice
[5]. Already within other social science disciplines, particularly anthro-
pology and archaeology, how research is being practiced is moving toward
a new agenda in which indigenous peoples are dictating the terms by which
research happens, what its purpose is, and what the outcomes will be
[43–47]. Academics are critically and reflexively reestablishing the research
relationships between those people performing research and those people
who are themselves the subjects of research [41, 45–47]. However, work
remains for broadening how action-based research is practiced within LIS
[5]—professionals and researchers must be attentive in their work to the
internal heterogeneities and stratifications within a seemingly unified
“community” [48]. Just because some community members are involved
in the research process does not mean that the concerns of everyone are
being heard, nor does it mean that the outcomes of the research can and
should be applied equally to all community members. The word “com-
munity” certainly has its place in our work, but we must be careful about
using “community” in a way that implies that indigenous and ethnic groups
are being wholly represented.
These popular methodological tools for developing CIS, as they are
currently used by LIS researchers, unfortunately have a significant omission
when it comes to working with developing CIS for particular groups. As
we will elaborate on in the following section, particular indigenous groups
maintain different protocols around circulating particular domains of cul-
tural information [49–51]. Because these methods for developing CIS are
backed by the underlying epistemological orientation of LIS toward liberal,
open, and unrestricted access to informational resources in our profes-
sional care [27, 28], they lack the ability to account for local protocols or
cultural differences in sharing and exchanging information. However, in-
digenous librarians and librarians who have worked with indigenous groups
for some time understand that sensitivity to local knowledge hierarchies
is an important part of services oriented toward these communities [11,
15, 52–54]. For example, in the Mukurtu Wumpurrani-kari Archive, a com-
puter-based CIS developed by the Warumungu community in Tennant
Creek, Australia, individual users are given access to particular records in
the system based on protocols derived from their individual kin networks
and ancestral territories [50]. These kinds of access parameters operate
very differently from existing LIS principles of intellectual freedom, yet
they are nonetheless critical for LIS researchers to account for when work-
ing with particular communities that place a high value on appropriate
access to cultural information. For LIS research to truly be attentive to
diversity, qualitative, collaborative methods need to become more main-
stream in the research methods that are used to develop CIS.
 INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE 427

Information Is Culturally Understood

Our understanding of the appropriate means by which information cir-
culates and is communicated is culturally situated. What we mean by this
is that there are protocols that influence the circumstances around infor-
mation sharing and these protocols are influenced by implicit cultural
factors that are often beneath conscious view but that are are nonetheless
quite significant for many levels of information access and dissemination
[27, 55]. The implicit cultural protocols behind LIS’s foundational prin-
ciple of information access are governed by underlying epistemological
concepts of free speech and intellectual freedom, which themselves are
backed by a long tradition of Western philosophical liberalism [7, 14, 28,
50]. However, given that the library professions have taken on the impor-
tant challenge of addressing the needs of marginalized groups, we must
also discuss the fact that some of these groups, especially the indigenous
groups, maintain different epistemological and ontological approaches to-
ward information as well as the protocols governing its circulation and
dissemination [14, 49, 50, 56]. Librarians working in a cross-cultural con-
text must develop tools for cultural sensitivity in creating CIS resources,
not just because of the differences in beliefs around information sharing
between indigenous groups and the librarian’s usual orientation toward
free access to information but also because different indigenous groups
in different places have very different protocols among themselves that
govern access to information.
For the past two years, we have been collaborating with partners from
the Zuni Native American tribe to develop a CIS project, “Recontextual-
izing Digital Objects” (RDO), which is a collaboration between the A:shiwi
A:wan Museum and Heritage Center of Zuni (AAMHC) in New Mexico;
the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (CUMAA) in
Cambridge, England; and the Graduate School of Education and Infor-
mation Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. The overall
vision of the project is to create an online “collaborative catalog” of Zuni
objects excavated in the 1920s that are currently held in the CUMAA’s
collections. One goal of the project is to help the Zuni to develop a dynamic
digital repository of information about these objects that establishes a “dig-
ital pipeline” between Zuni and the CUMAA but that also serves as a locus
for cultural revitalization via community participation in cultural discus-
sions (for a more in-depth discussion of the RDO project and its other
findings, see [57] and [58]).
While we did not anticipate their importance in the early stages of our
project, several elements of Zuni culture and their history with outside
researchers have had a significant impact on our research design and the
development of our project. The Zuni, like many indigenous groups, main-
tain an established hierarchy of restrictions by which cultural and religious
428 THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY

knowledge circulates through the community and is passed on to younger

generations, one that is based around their own culturally established no-
tions of appropriateness and ethics [49, 59]. Moreover, as our Zuni project
collaborators have cautioned, the Zuni have a historically uneasy relation-
ship with social research on the reservation because of many situations
over the past century where these important local protocols around in-
formation access were disregarded by scholars wanting to publish cultural
“secrets” in the name of “the advancement of knowledge,” often unheeding
of the negative impact that breach of confidence might have on a local,
day-to-day level within the Zuni community [60, 61]. Furthermore, con-
cerns that their culture will be exploited is another reason for Zuni’s
apprehension to work with outsiders, particularly researchers, authors, and
artists. The history of outsiders at Zuni has left a cautious attitude on the
part of the Zuni when they are approached by outside researchers inter-
ested in cultural revitalization efforts, primarily because of concerns about
how liberal Western notions of free and open access will conflict with Zuni
notions of appropriate and sensitive access [49]. Therefore, as the staff of
the AAMHC began to negotiate the details of our project’s research design
with researchers from CUMAA and the University of California, Los An-
geles, in the fall of 2007, they were keen to establish a research relationship
that looks very different from how CIS projects are usually developed in
libraries, as described above. Our project relies on Zuni researchers to
collect the data for the project, it permits a high degree of reflexivity to
ensure that the research remains relevant and attentive to community
needs, and it allows for a high level of Zuni control over the resulting
“research products,” that is, the technological systems and publications we
develop from our work. These key differences reflect the important meth-
odological changes taking place across the social sciences within research
projects involving indigenous people, as discussed earlier [45, 47]. Aware
of its role in the community as representing the Zuni culture both to
outsiders and back to the Zuni themselves, the AAMHC effectively mediates
between the degree of information access that is expected from an insti-
tution called a “museum” and the sensitivity and sense of appropriateness
about certain domains of knowledge that is needed to satisfy local cultural
restrictions around information sharing [49].
Recently, the notion of indigenous knowledge, which encompasses local
epistemologies and practices around health, culture, family and society,
and the environment, has necessitated a critical evaluation of existing eth-
ical and methodological approaches in social science disciplines, including
LIS [14, 15, 45, 62, 63]. What has changed quite recently is the colonialist
notion that the knowledge resources held by indigenous groups is a “public
domain” entity, available for the taking because it has been deemed “folk-
lore” or “myth” and is thus open to all [45, 50, 64, 65]. A unified and
 INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE 429

narrow definition of “public” (as in “public domain” and “public good” )

does not function successfully in a cross-cultural context—in fact, the “pub-
lic” is fragmented and multiple, and the legal framework that supports this
notion of public, especially in the domain of intellectual property, has
fallen under criticism from several directions for continuing the project
of colonialism by protecting the intellectual property (IP) of the First World
while keeping the IP resources of the Third World at risk [12, 64–68].
Furthermore, this emerging understanding of indigenous knowledge is
starting to have an impact on library-related work [15, 69]. The ALA Office
for Information Technology Policy recently released a set of much-needed
policies for libraries and their stewardship of traditional cultural expres-
sions [15]. These highlight the need for reciprocity, collaboration, and
mutual respect related to indigenous knowledge. Because it is often orally
transmitted, community owned, locally oriented, and tradition based, in-
digenous knowledge presents several challenges to how information pro-
fessionals handle and provide access to it—specifically, related to ownership
of materials, attribution and authorship, and conditions of access [12, 14].
The last issue has the most relevance to our discussion of developing CIS
since LIS professionals are predisposed to define the terms of access in
the broadest way possible, despite the fact that these broad terms are often
in tension with the desires of indigenous people for a more restrictive
approach to access to information about them held in library and archival
institutions [14, 70].
Although much progress has been made toward creating strategies for
appropriately handling indigenous knowledge within information re-
positories [11, 15, 53, 70], our argument is intended to bring attention
to a slightly more nuanced issue, namely, the internal hierarchies of
information circulation within communities. Put simply, our argument
in favor of critical thinking in developing CIS projects for diverse com-
munities questions how CIS resources will be made available to individ-
uals within the community at which the project is targeted. As we argued
in the previous section, methods for developing CIS do not account for
the important hierarchies and protocols via which information and
knowledge circulates through local communities, particularly a signifi-
cant minority of indigenous communities with culturally grounded hi-
erarchies that guide the sharing of cultural knowledge [14, 44, 49]. The
concept of intellectual freedom is regarded by many indigenous groups
as a foreign and unwelcome idea when applied to their own cultural
knowledge [14, 50, 70, 71]. Diversity, in this sense, is not about the same
type of access, usage, or service for those with different cultural or ethnic
backgrounds [72]. Instead, it is about different systems of circulation,
different community priorities and ontologies, and different modes of
adopting and a different pace for acting upon received information,
430 THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY

which can all vary across different communities [56]. Kimberly Christen
gives an example of this kind of hierarchical circulation of knowledge
as it operates among the Wamurungu Australian Aboriginal collaborators
with whom she collaborates, revealing the important ramifications for
how information professionals handle this type of knowledge in their
collections: “For example, an ancestral song series might be restricted
based on gender, it may be for women only. Or, a ritual dance might
involve a particular ancestral track that crosses through two distinct ter-
ritories. Thus, rights to perform the song are negotiated by those who
are related to those territories. Or an elder may pass away and their
knowledge of a particular territory may be inaccessible to outsiders for
some time. . . . What is significant is that the relation between people,
places, and ancestors continually combines with variable protocols to
determine access, rights, and privileges” [49, p. 13].
For a profession like LIS, with its well-established commitment to eq-
uitable access to information, these layers of restrictive protocols gov-
erning which individuals may or may not access certain domains of in-
formation may sit uncomfortably next to professional practices that
champion freedom of access. Furthermore, these protocols vary among
different groups—the specific protocols outlined in Christen’s example
are quite different from some of the protocols about which our Zuni
collaborators are concerned. Additionally, not all communities are suit-
able for a CIS approach to circulating information, and the methods that
practitioners use to begin the process should be attuned to that possibility.
However, we argue that incorporating these concerns into the develop-
ment of research projects is an important component of embracing a
professional commitment to diversity and culturally sensitive professional
practices.
As we developed the RDO project over the past two years, we found that
this tension around information access in CIS in a cross-cultural context
was not unique to our project, nor was it well represented in the LIS
literature. Several researchers in other social science disciplines are work-
ing with indigenous groups to develop community information resources
focused on cultural heritage, and these researchers have realized the im-
portance of developing culturally sensitive methodologies adapted to local
concerns around the circulation and access to cultural information [7, 50,
51, 73]. However, within the discourse of LIS research, the importance of
developing culturally sensitive methods for developing CIS projects in a
cross-cultural context is still absent, as we discussed above. Building on the
experiences of the RDO project partners and the experiences of other
researchers we interviewed, the second part of this article will fill this gap
by proposing a framework of culturally responsive, ethically motivated
guidelines for developing CIS. The next section presents data gathered
 INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE 431

from conversations with several leading scholars, including our Zuni pro-
ject collaborators, all of whom are creating innovative CIS projects with
indigenous groups around the world that account for local hierarchies and
cultural differences in information circulation and whose work exposes
the tension between cultural diversity and the neoliberal notion of free
access to information. Using their insights, we have created a framework
for developing CIS using collaborative, reflexive methods that can account
for local community hierarchies and protocols around the circulation of
information.

A Culturally Sensitive Framework for Developing Community

Information Services

Given the issues raised in the previous section, it is clear that a new ap-
proach must be taken toward developing outreach-oriented information
services in LIS research. This section presents some important points that
were first raised by our Zuni collaborators on the RDO project, but we
also found them echoed in the findings of other researchers working at
the intersection of indigenous cultural heritage, innovative ICTs, and col-
laborative research endeavors.4 Our goal is to propose a model for devel-
oping CIS that accounts for the inherent ethical tensions in projects that
involve different ideologies of access, circulation, and more. Our model
is based on what our Zuni colleagues have told us as well as what other
researchers have found as they have worked with other indigenous groups
to create CIS projects. Our interviews with the Zuni leaders and the other
interviewees reflect insights that they themselves have gathered through
the long-term use of ethnography and participant observation and sus-
tained relationships with particular communities. We emphasize that these
are guidelines, not rules, since every project has its own specific issues to
consider. Interspersed between the descriptions of the main points of our
model are excerpts from discussions we have had with other researchers,
presented this way to share the insights of our colleagues in their own
words.

4. We present this model and analysis based on discussions we had with key researchers and
practitioners engaged in projects with these elements in common: (1) their research focuses
on developing a CIS, (2) they are working with an indigenous group or groups on a project
aimed at cultural revitalization and/or preserving cultural heritage, and (3) they have pre-
sented work that reconsiders the assumptions of open and universal access to information
as somewhat contrary to the intentions of indigenous groups producing cultural revitalization
projects around their own heritage. From a short list of research projects matching these
criteria, we contacted and interviewed the researchers overseeing the projects.
432 THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY

A Culturally Sensitive Model for Collaborative LIS Research

• Collaborative methods : research is done with people, rather than on or
about them.
• Direct indigenous involvement : collaborators are involved at all levels and
phases of the research project.
• Ensuring appropriateness : steps are taken to appropriately handle sen-
sitive information gathered in the course of research.
• Establishing the “right” kind of research relationship : a research partnership
is defined according to what works best for everyone.
• Ownership of the project (goals and products) : the project has relevant
goals, and the ownership of research products is clearly defined.

Collaborative Methods
A collaborative methodology is placed at the center of the research design,
and we argue that it is the key focus for any project looking to maintain a
degree of cultural sensitivity. While “collaboration” is a concept that has
often been used throughout academic and professional literature, in our
model of culturally sensitive LIS research, we are arguing for research that
is done with people, rather than on or about them—meaning that their
active participation in decision making is essential in every phase of research,
from the first identification of the research problem through to the final
conclusions. While librarians have been addressing real-world problems and
turning their research focus toward creating tangible benefits for library
users for many years [17], truly collaborative methodologies have yet to find
a foothold within LIS research devoted to developing CIS [5].
Two of our Zuni research colleagues define collaborative methods this way:

A collaborative project . . . means a lot of different sides going into one topic. . . .
You have to work together, not one person can do the work, all the different sides
have to contribute. . . . We all have totally different processes, different ways of
thinking. We all come together and we have to negotiate what we want to do, the
papers we want to write, what outcomes is this going to bring. (Kellen Shelendewa,
Zuni researcher)

I think that the lessons that are guiding my decisions about how to do the project
have a lot to do with having some control over how we do the research. There has
to be some flexibility and understandings about how things are going to be done
here because concepts of time, ownership, privacy, and rapidly changing priorities
all need to be accounted for, and I have to personally vouch for research that will
affect my community. This is important in our small community where everyone
knows each other because I have to live with the results for the rest of my life, and
maybe after that too! ( Jim Enote [Zuni], Director of A:shiwi A:wan Museum and
Heritage Center)
 INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE 433

Direct Indigenous Involvement

This critical component directly involves collaborators at all levels and
phases of the research project: the design, implementation, data collection
and analysis, and publication. Too often, many details of the project have
been decided by the outside researchers before the indigenous collabo-
rators are brought into the discussion, which may mean that the project
does not satisfy all of the various and possibly incompatible goals of the
project stakeholders. A significant difference between this older paradigm
of research and truly collaborative research is that participants reflexively
acknowledge that their involvement, as social participants, truly matters to
the process and outcomes of social research. In some sense, what might
have once been considered “bias” has become a critical part of successful
social research ventures.
The biggest difference from research that’s been done in the past, or the difference
that I’ve seen, is that there have all been several projects that involve research,
primarily outside research interests, but this project involves Zuni researchers. They
are Zunis that are collecting the information, and interacting with community
directly. Other research at Zuni tends to have outside researchers come in and do
the work, in other words, interviewing and such. Sometimes they hire Zunis to do
some of the work, but they often bring in their own people. It’s different and the
same. It’s different from say twenty years ago, where it was almost all outside re-
searchers coming here and gathering the information. When I was working for the
Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, when we agreed to collaborate with
outside researchers, we negotiated that Zunis would be collecting the information.
So that’s in the past ten years—at least when I’m involved. I can’t speak for others—
I know that there’s obviously lots and lots of projects. But this is one of the few
research projects that’s ongoing at Zuni right now. So that’s how it’s different, the
Zuni participation. ( Jim Enote [Zuni], Director of A:shiwi A:wan Museum and
Heritage Center)

Ensuring Appropriateness
Researchers must ensure that data collection proceeds with sensitivity and
appropriateness. For the RDO project, we have done this by employing
Zuni researchers to perform the data collection, often in Zuni language,
and we are relying upon them to ensure the appropriateness of the data
we collect. Having researchers whom the participants in the study know
personally, or can relate to because of a shared cultural identity, counts
for a great deal in a community with a conflicted and problematic historical
relationship with outside researchers. Furthermore, this step ensures that
researchers are keenly aware of the high level of responsibility and ac-
countability that is being put upon them to gather accurate information
and to handle that information in an appropriate manner considering the
way that the community wants knowledge to circulate. In the Zuni project,
434 THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY

our colleagues told us that they often “put the pen down” during an in-
terview should the topic of conversation range into esoteric religious sub-
jects or into areas of local gossip, both of which are outside of our study’s
purview. While other researchers might balk at this “lost” data, in our line
of thinking, this represents a significant step forward toward establishing
culturally responsive research strategies. Other researchers we spoke to
echoed the necessity for ensuring that the research follows culturally ap-
propriate methods in all phases:
When that kind of confidence is established right at the beginning, simply because
it’s from one Zuni to another, our awareness is thinking that this information is
secured, or our discussions are secured, simply because we’re one Zuni to another.
And so the information is very free-flowing in that sense. However, I have the
responsibility and the understanding, and I know the parameters of making sure
that this information is not available for everybody. That’s the moment that I
understand that I have to put the pen down . . . but [we] continue to talk because
of the trust that’s already been established. (Dan Simplicio, Zuni researcher)

Gathering community input has really been quite a fluid process—someone would
be working with the system, and then they’d say “Oh, no, so-and-so needs to be
here to look at this before we say anything about it.” So people are fairly aware of
making sure the right people speak and are heard. (Kimberly Christen, project
director, Mukurtu Wumpurrarni-kari Archive [http://www.mukurtuarchive.org/])

Establishing the “Right” Kind of Relationship

An important feature of a culturally responsive LIS project is how the
relationship between the collaborators is defined, and this will likely vary
across different projects according to what local organizations want out of
the project [74]. In one situation, a partnership between institutions may
be the best characterization for the relationship between project partners;
in another situation, a more informally defined relationship between part-
ners, for example, a loosely organized community group and a library,
might be more appropriate. Additionally, the dynamics between different
information institutions, for example, a library and a museum, within the
same community might also have to be accounted for by outside research-
ers, since both institutions may wish to claim the CIS project as “theirs.”
As an example, in the RDO project, our research relationship is framed
as an institution-to-institution relationship, a partnership between the
A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center; University of California, Los
Angeles; and Cambridge University. On one level, establishing this level
of relationship legitimates the AAMHC as an institution within the com-
munity, but framing the relationship this way also means that this research
project can make a significant contribution to the scarce literature that
is framed from an indigenous perspective and yet is scholarly and rig-
 INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE 435

orously performed. However, such a formalized relationship may not

work as well in another situation where circumstances are different. Ul-
timately, it is through the processes of dialogue and consensus that the
research stakeholders can decide what kind of research relationship
works best for all who are involved.

Really the Aboriginal groups had their own projects and ideas going, and they just
needed our help to get the funding and take care of some of the organizational
details. They have their own ideas and aspirations for what they want to get done.
It’s very much the model that they are consulting with us, we are not in charge.
(Michael Christie, chief investigator, Indigenous Knowledge and Resource Man-
agement in Northern Australia [IKRMNA] project [http://www.cdu.edu.au/ik])

I think what I’m particularly proud of is the way that the museum is progressing
toward being a community-based, community-influenced museum or tribal museum.
Because it is a 501(c)3 [nonprofit entity] apart from the Zuni tribe, I think that that
is one of the benefits of the museum, because it can really grow and not have any
sort of restrictions on the level of influence that it has not only with the community
but also the outside community, such as other museums in different cities and dif-
ferent countries. The museum has been working with the Cambridge University in
England! I think that is one of the things that I’m proud to be associated with—how
they are working on these different interactions, these collaborations outside the
community as well as within the community. (Kellen Shelendewa, Zuni researcher)

One of my biggest problems has been not to work with the Mapuche as an an-
thropologist, since what my research is about is not traditional anthropology. Rather,
I want to be seen as an activist working on communication projects with a com-
munity. . . . To show them that I was serious about what I wanted to do, I funded
our work with my own money—that had a big impact. ( Juan Salazar, project col-
laborator with Mapuche media organizations in Chile)

A longtime collaborator of mine once said, “I have a relationship with Faye. My

sense of trust about who’s going to look after my collection in the way it needs to
be looked after has to do with my relationship with her. It worries me—I don’t
know if there’s a way to formalize this away from the relationships that are built
among people who know each other through these collections.” I think she’s right.
. . . She knows that I care that her work will be properly looked after with all the
right protocols, and as long as I’m around, that will happen, and she doesn’t have
to worry about that. But if I’m not here, no matter what sort of contract is drawn
up—because it’s so atypical from the normal Western conventions of how to look
after things and free access and so forth, because it requires so much to really think
about, pay attention, and learn the difference, her confidence is very much built
on relationships with people—with me specifically. How does that get formalized
and how do we make it last? (Faye Ginsburg, a leading scholar in indigenous-
produced media research projects)
436 THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY

Ownership of the Project (Goals and Products)

Importantly, our model argues that ownership of research must be dis-
cussed among the project stakeholders at all points during the partnership
[44, 60]. While the success of a project may not directly depend on whether
the original idea for a research project came from inside or outside a
community, what is crucial is that the project is always thought about in
terms of relevance to community needs and what is important to them,
in other words, that the project goals are owned by the community. Fur-
thermore, the issue of ownership of the products of research, ranging from
fieldnotes to published works to online access systems for objects of cultural
patrimony, must be discussed during the early phases of research to avoid
misunderstandings or difficulty later in the research process. The outcomes
of research are valuable, in many senses, and the nature of that value could
lead to conflicts “down the line” if the issue of ownership is not discussed
from the start:

It is absolutely critical to have ownership of the project be in the hands of the

community—you need those champions who will be your advocate if things get
difficult. In our project, it was my friends that I’d made through doing fieldwork
in that community for more than ten years who asked for my help in creating some
sort of access system, since they were getting all these photographs repatriated and
they really wanted some sort of controls put on viewing them. They really came
up with the idea and asked me for my help. I wrote a couple of grants, and things
went on from there. (Kim Christen, project director, Mukurtu Wumpurrarni-kari
Archive)

This is not our project, really it is their vision, their hope, and their problems—it
is their project. Our challenge is figuring out how we can help. We’re asked “How
are you guys important?“—we’re providing money, helping with the details. Our
role is catalytic, more about listening and offering, coming up with reimaginings—
naming what they do in a different way. (Helen Verran, chief investigator, Indig-
enous Knowledge and Resource Management in Northern Australia [IKRMNA]
project)

I feel responsible to help keep the project relevant to Zuni. It can really quickly
be criticized: “What are you guys interviewing people for? Why are you writing
papers that nobody’s going to read?” So we have to keep things relevant in all
stages. It’s a little bit of my anxiety, because I know that people are always going
to be critical of research, if you have that word “research” in there, people are
going to immediately be negative and critical of it. “Who’s doing the research?
And what are they extracting this time?” So I always have to be defending what
we’re doing here, because I, or we, are vouching for it. And we’re producing it.
. . . And these examples that we’re coming up with, these are really helpful because
I can say “Yeah, well, for example, ____.” We’re gathering this information about
 INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE 437

what people think about learning and culture; that people feel like not enough
culture is being learned. . . . So that’s good for us, that helps us. It verifies and
validates a lot of things we had hunches about—it really helps having these numbers.
We just have to be careful here. (Jim Enote, director, A:shiwi A:wan Museum and
Heritage Center)

Conclusions and Future Directions

Library and information studies has made great strides recently in bringing
widespread professional and academic attention to issues of diversity in
our field and how we can transform our professional work to better address
the needs of disenfranchised groups in society. However, as we have argued,
many of the assumptions behind some core values in our field—intellectual
freedom and universal access—are culturally constructed, and rarely are
we called upon to think critically about how these assumptions drive the
choices we make in our professional work. In this article, we have focused
our discussion on how our professional value of access, and the assumptions
that underpin that value, influence the research methods usually used to
develop community information services, which hold great promise for
engaging communities in matters of their own cultural heritage. Our aim
has been to add an important caveat to the methods used to develop CIS
resources by presenting our culturally sensitive model for CIS research
based upon our own experiences as well as the insights of our colleagues
who have encountered similar situations where the Western notion of in-
tellectual freedom and the LIS value of equitable access do not fit with
the desires of indigenous groups developing CIS resources around their
own cultural heritage. Diversity is about more than just providing the same
service or same level of access to people with different ethnic or cultural
backgrounds, and a true commitment to encompassing diversity in our
field requires that we critically assess how the assumptions that drive our
field may not apply cross culturally when librarians are collaborating with
different cultural groups. While what we are saying applies more strongly
in the case of CIS projects created with indigenous groups, particularly
Native Americans, LIS professionals should nonetheless be mindful of cul-
tural differences in information sharing regardless of the culture with
which they are working. There remains a great deal of interesting and
important work to be done in which librarians work in collaboration with
indigenous and marginalized communities to establish CIS in ways that
carefully and appropriately establish culturally sensitive protocols for cir-
culating cultural heritage information.
438 THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY

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