Evidence of Colonialism in the Metadata of Indigenious American Archival Materials

This paper discusses evidence of colonialism in metadata and cataloguing practices in Indigenous American archival material. The research in this paper was conducted with a random dataset of 160 Indigenous American archival materials from the Library of Congress. Throughout history, archives have stood strong as institutions we can trust to tell us the stories of those from the past. These voices shape and change our culture, history, and worldviews of others and ourselves. However, history sometimes is altered and misconstrued. Colonialism is a form of imperialism that has existed for a millennium and affects several parts of history, and therefore archives.