Cataloging for great justice!
Jun. 11th, 2009 11:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sunnyskywalkerOkay, it is not quite so dramatic. But it still matters. I direct your attention to the AILA (American Indian Library Association) Selected Bibliography on cataloging issues relating to native peoples.
The first article on the list, to take an example, mentions that the Library of Congress Subject Headings have "Indians, Treatment of" as the closest subject heading that applies to the centuries of genocide, and points out that no one thinks of using the subject heading "Jews, Treatment of" for the Holocaust. (Well, maybe the guy who shot the guard at the Holocaust Memorial Museum would, if he thought how people treated Jews mattered.) Subject headings say a lot about what is considered important, or what is even considered to have happened. The author also mentions the issue of using tribes' own names for themselves vs. the ones others have given them (the LC has changed Chippewa to Ojibwe, but not Cherokee to Tsalagi).
In a related issue, I am grateful to Debbie Reese for posting Where is your copy of The Education of Little Tree?. I recently discovered that the library where I work a) has a copy and b) shelved it in Biography. That is how it was marketed, before it was discovered that Forrest Carter was really Klansman Asa Carter and his claims to Cherokee ancestry dubious at best. It's fiction, and should be shelved with fiction. I never would have known about this without Reese's post.
Here's The Transformation of a Klansman by Dan T. Carter, the 1991 article revealing that Forrest Carter was really Klansman Asa Carter and his autobiography not as truthful as he let on.
Chapter Three of Going Native (previewable on Google Books) is all about this book and Asa/Forrest.
This issue of Studies in American Indian Literatures has an article by Daniel Heath Justice (a Cherokee) about whites telling “Indian” stories, the effect the book had on him as a child, stereotypes, Carter’s “lone person/family against the rest of the world” narratives in this and other books, and more.
What is it with people who try to pass off fiction as autobiography, anyway? We've had several of those in the past few years.
In other, non-library indigenous issues, there is some seriously scary stuff going down in Peru. Like suspending civil liberties and sending in tanks and helicopters kind of scary. After people who are protesting that they ought to have a voice about what happens in their own lands.
ETA: I forgot to add this link to the post about the Canadian Border Patrol considering giving its agents firearms. To protect a border that cuts right through the Mohawk Nation's Akwesasne Territory.
The first article on the list, to take an example, mentions that the Library of Congress Subject Headings have "Indians, Treatment of" as the closest subject heading that applies to the centuries of genocide, and points out that no one thinks of using the subject heading "Jews, Treatment of" for the Holocaust. (Well, maybe the guy who shot the guard at the Holocaust Memorial Museum would, if he thought how people treated Jews mattered.) Subject headings say a lot about what is considered important, or what is even considered to have happened. The author also mentions the issue of using tribes' own names for themselves vs. the ones others have given them (the LC has changed Chippewa to Ojibwe, but not Cherokee to Tsalagi).
In a related issue, I am grateful to Debbie Reese for posting Where is your copy of The Education of Little Tree?. I recently discovered that the library where I work a) has a copy and b) shelved it in Biography. That is how it was marketed, before it was discovered that Forrest Carter was really Klansman Asa Carter and his claims to Cherokee ancestry dubious at best. It's fiction, and should be shelved with fiction. I never would have known about this without Reese's post.
Here's The Transformation of a Klansman by Dan T. Carter, the 1991 article revealing that Forrest Carter was really Klansman Asa Carter and his autobiography not as truthful as he let on.
Chapter Three of Going Native (previewable on Google Books) is all about this book and Asa/Forrest.
This issue of Studies in American Indian Literatures has an article by Daniel Heath Justice (a Cherokee) about whites telling “Indian” stories, the effect the book had on him as a child, stereotypes, Carter’s “lone person/family against the rest of the world” narratives in this and other books, and more.
What is it with people who try to pass off fiction as autobiography, anyway? We've had several of those in the past few years.
In other, non-library indigenous issues, there is some seriously scary stuff going down in Peru. Like suspending civil liberties and sending in tanks and helicopters kind of scary. After people who are protesting that they ought to have a voice about what happens in their own lands.
ETA: I forgot to add this link to the post about the Canadian Border Patrol considering giving its agents firearms. To protect a border that cuts right through the Mohawk Nation's Akwesasne Territory.
