Indigenous ways: assessing the awareness of and potential need for identifying content on indigenous world view in educating Libraries/Archives/Museum (LAM) entry level professionals

Professional associations in the libraries, archives, and museums (LAM) area have developed competency documents that provide guidance on the education and training of new professionals. One competency area that remains unresolved but is of increasing importance is the knowledge base we refer to as indigenous ways. Indigenous ways refer to the traditional lifeways, personal and community protocol or etiquette, and beliefs of Native peoples. Knowledge of indigenous ways is essential in assisting LAM professionals in understanding the boundaries, limits, and intersections between cultural protocols of indigenous communities and professional values. This paper reports on preliminary findings from the “Indigenous Ways” project - an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) funded collaborative planning grant to acquire benchmark data on the level of awareness of indigenous ways among libraries, archives, and museum (LAM) faculty, recent graduates, tribal LAM professionals, and individuals who have served on committees or work groups that have produced recent professional documents on indigenous ways. The goal of the project is to assess awareness and develop recommendations for curricular material that might assist LAM educators in incorporating the concepts around indigenous ways into their graduate classes.