Researching Native North American Environmental Issues on the Internet

by Alx Dark

In this essay I introduce some key resources for doing research on environmental issues that impact Native American communities in Canada and the United States. I assume that you are already familiar with e-mail, mailing lists and the World Wide Web. Of the three, mailing lists are perhaps the least utilized, but you can easily find instructions through the Web on how to subscribe to such a list.

The intended audience of this essay is undergraduate (post-secondary) students who desire to do research on Native American environmental issues, however, the resources listed here will serve more experienced researchers as well. I will also offer some advice on obtaining library and other resources that are normally only available to academics and students.

What are the advantages of using the Internet for your research? The Internet can contribute to your research in three ways:

1. Information on the Internet is more timely than published information. Also (unlike many news sources) wide participation in Web publishing and mailing lists insures that information on almost every issue is readily available;

2. The Internet provides a chance to communicate with and learn from people across professional, status, locational and even racial barriers that might be present in other forms of communication; and

3. On-line research offers the advantage of access to information from diverse sources, including government, corporate, non-governmental and academic spheres.

Keep in mind that although the Internet is important for providing on-line information, it is equally useful in guiding your off-line research. No serious piece of research can rely only on the information provided via the Web, but the Internet's timely and diverse information provides a solid background for such activities as locating publications at the library, developing contacts, or writing and calling for information.

Keeping Informed on Native American Environmental Issues

The first challenge for the would-be student of Native American peoples and the environment is to learn about the issues and the actors. If you are searching for a school paper topic, for example, a short encyclopedia article by David R Lewis might be worth reading.

We recommend you browse our Native Americans and the Environment web site which will initially provide you with many other places to explore. A good web site for Native American environmental issues is Planet Peace. It is actively maintained and contains a variety of information. You can also use general directories like the Index of Native American Resources on the Internet, NativeWeb or EnviroLink. There are many others I haven't listed here but you can find them through these pages.

Finding On-line Information

Once you have a subject for research, some more specific resources will be helpful.

To locate environmental organizations which can provide information on your research subject, the Environmental Organizations Web Directory provides the most complete on-line information of which we are aware. If an organization has a web page, assess how much of that organization's knowledge and education activities are actually up on the Internet. It may still be worth your while to pick up the phone, introduce yourself and your research, and ask for any information or education materials they can provide. Depending on the organization and your own research, it may be desirable to offer a copy of your report or paper when you are done. For example, journalists routinely send copies of their articles to the people they interview.

To locate scientific information, we recommend that you refer to the Natural Resources Research Information Pages (NRRIP) and locate some research institutions in the region of your research. Often, a university or research center will specialize in the resources in the area. For example, if you are interested in British Columbia and you go to the Faculty of Forestry at the University of British Columbia, you will find a perfectly serviceable page of links on forestry with a pacific northwest emphasis.

Most importantly, you will want to find out what Native American communities think about a particular environmental issue. Native American governments are slowly coming on-line, but contact information is available. You can locate on-line references by or about specific Native American communities by using an excellent list of Tribal Contacts that has been compiled by A Line in the Sand. Also take note of fax, mail and phone contact information at this site -- as I noted in the case of environmental organizations, there may be other resources that tribal governments can make available to you than those on their web pages (if they have them).

Finally, our Native Americans and the Environment site can provide access to additional organizations. For example, if you were interested in the Chippewa treaty fishery, you would find the Menominee Sustainable Development Institute, the Midwest Treaty Network and the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission (among other resources on Native American peoples in the northeast). You can call or write these organizations and request information as well.

Of course, each of these sites is likely to have a list of links and soon enough you'll have a lot of places to look for information. Once you've located all these great sites, review what you've found and read the information provided beyond page one. You will want to keep in mind how to cite Internet resources in case you refer to this material later (or perhaps something you receive in a mailing list). Digesting this material early will also help you move into more productive library and database research.

Databases

Now it is time to get down to brass tacks. There are a few databases that are readily available via the Web. Through them you can obtain not only bibliographic citations, but other information as well, such as how to contact tribal environmental managers, actual tribal environmental regulations, or detailed information on the use of plants by Native Americans:

• Nunavut Planning Commission Datasets -- Includes bibliographic and research information on the arctic region, as well as a database of "experts" on the region;
• Ethnobotany -- A number of databases exist for ethnobotany, including foods and medicines:
  1. American Indian Ethnobotany Database
  2. The Agricultural Genome Information Server (AGIS) has three databases, including Medicinal Plants of Native America, Native American Food Plants and Worldwide Plant Uses

You may also find useful databases through the database list at the NRRIP or through Research Engines for the Social Sciences.

Using the Library

You can access library catalogs from your web browser, and use them to develop a bibliography before you go to the library. If you are working at a university computer, their library system is probably accessible from the university's home page. You can also use the College and University Home Pages site to find the homepages (and from there, the libraries) of universities in your area or the area of your research. Of course, local library catalogs will tell you what you can expect to find in your library; if you have borrowing privileges, you can search larger library catalogs for other resources to request through interlibrary loan.

Although library catalogs can provide you with information about books, newspapers and journals, the articles in the journals will not be in the catalog. One way to find articles is to use the UnCover database. There are many pages to navigate, but keep selecting search links until you are able to enter search terms. You will then need to look up the magazines and journals where you can find relevant articles.

The Library of Congress has a very large library catalog where you can learn about resources that may not be in your local library. However, the system for accessing their catalogs, LOCIS, is convoluted and you will definitely want to read the instructions. The National Library of Canada has a more straightforward library catalogue.

If these catalog systems are not clear to you, here are some of the largest academic libraries in the United States and Canada. If you choose a library in the region of your research, they will be more likely to have relevant materials:

• U.S. Academic Libraries: UC Berkeley (catalog), Harvard University (catalog), Yale University (catalog), UC Los Angeles (catalog), University of Illinois -- Urbana (catalog), University of Michigan (catalog), University of Texas (catalog)

• Canadian Academic Libraries: Memorial University of Newfoundland, (catalogue), Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, (catalogue), L'Université du Québec à Montréal, (catalogue), University of Alberta, (catalogue), University of British Columbia, (catalogue), University of Calgary, (catalogue), University of Manitoba, (catalogue), University of Ottawa, (catalogue), University of Saskatchewan, (catalogue)

Other Bibliographies

• References on the American Indian Use of Fire in Ecosystems
• Aboriginal Overkill and Native Burning: Implications for Modern Ecosystem Management
• Ethnobotany and Paleoethnobotany: A Bibliography
• Alaska Department of Fish and Game Technical Abstracts on Subsistence
• Environmental Justice Database

Broadening Your On-Line Resources

At this point you should have quite a list of publications, Internet resources and potential contacts to pursue for your research. However, if your subject is more difficult and you are not finding materials, you may need to broaden your search. For WWW resources you can use a search engine such as Alta Vista, which has good instructions on how to maximize your search for items. Another good search engine is Lycos. You may want to return to some of the general resource sites mentioned above. There are also search engines for Gopher, Telnet (including library catalogs and other resources) and FTP sites.

There may be a mailing list that discusses issues that are relevant to your research. To see if a particular list will interest you before you subscribe, you can browse an archive of environmental mailing lists or the ecojustice mailing list. There is a search engine called Liszt which is solely for mailing lists and it provides instructions on how to subscribe to the lists of your choice.

Finally, another resource to be aware of is the Switchboard telephone and address directory. You can look up businesses and individuals here and eventually you will be able to look up their e-mail addresses as well.

Contacting Native American Governments

Understand that tribal and band council personnel are often busy and they often have numerous projects to manage. You will want to allow time for people to respond to your requests (three months, perhaps). Although e-mail is becoming more common, generally people do not feel as compelled to respond to e-mail as they do to letters. Write or call. Be sure to describe your affiliation, the nature of your research, the product you expect to result from the research, and the information that you are requesting. If appropriate, explain how people can contact you and offer a copy of your study, paper or article when it is done. Do follow through on that promise. If you send a letter, you can follow it up with a call in two or three weeks and reintroduce yourself and your work. At the same time, recognize that some governments or organizations may just not be able to get back to you. However, I have been pleasantly surprised by the generosity of tribal governments and related organizations in providing information, so it is well worth your effort.