Inching Forward in the Face of Hegemonic Factors: Examining Metadata Contradictions Across University Indigenous Collections

Changes to terminology take time and heighten tensions in language description, in preference of naming conventions, and institutional practices. External forces like the mandates of the United Nations Declaration on Indigenous Peoples, and the Canadian Federation of Library Associations (CFLA) recommendations for the Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action, influence the actions taken by organizations and move us forward. However, other structural and systemic forces can impede these efforts. At the University of Calgary, decisions about which vocabularies to use are further muddied by different practices across our units, and the methods available to make updates to our systems. Our Library Managment System (LMS) needs to wait for updates from the vocabulary authorities, while our digital collections does not, allowing them to make big changes faster. By examining the applicable vocabularies in Canada, we can surface the hegemonic forces at work, that exist internal and external to the institution. For instance, while standardization aids in discovery, it also drives a hegemonic use of language which does not describe Canadian content such as Indigenous names. In grappling with these forces, we confront and oppose them as we work through the process of updating subject headings and descriptive language for Indigenous content within our systems.