Use LibrarySearch to find books, videos, theses, government documents and other resources in the Library collection.

Different terms/keywords may be effective when searching for Indigenous topics, depending on:

• time period of study
• date of publication
• country/region of study
• whether the search is for general (e.g. Aboriginal) or specific information (e.g. Snuneymuxw).

The term "Indians of North America" was widely used by libraries in the first part of the twentieth century, and may be useful to retrieve information from that period.

In BC the term First Nations is frequently used in contemporary academic/educational environments. The Canadian government favours the terms Indigenous or Indigenous Peoples, which also includes Métis and Inuit.

In the United States the term Native Americans is quite commonly used, whereas in Canada the term Native Peoples gained popularity in the later twentieth century.

Your searches will be more productive if you are aware of these various search terms and make them work for you.

Searching for specific cultural groups
 

When searching for information about a specific people it helps to consider possible alternate spellings.

Published information may reflect spelling variations over time or due to development of writing systems for languages that were not written until recently.

e.g. (Kwakiutl OR Kwagutl OR Kwagiutl)

e.g. (Nisga OR Niska OR Nishga OR "Nisga'a")

General searching
 

This search can be used to retrieve information related to First Nations broadly:

("first nations" OR aboriginal OR indigenous OR "indians of north america" OR "native peoples")

You can combine it with words that represent other ideas. For example:

("first nations" OR aboriginal OR indigenous OR "indians of north america" OR "native peoples") "language revitalization"

Note: Indians of North America may be abbreviated to 'indians', but then results pertaining to India may also be retrieved.