Email the Library: wwclibrary@ccc.edu
Thank you for visiting Wright College Library’s Native American Research Guide. This guide will direct you to useful resources, including books, eBooks, databases, and documentaries.
If you have any questions or would like help with your research, please contact a librarian. We are available for help in-person, virtually, over the phone, and through chat.
One-on-one research appointments are also available.
To access material quickly, libraries use controlled vocabulary within their catalog systems. Controlled vocabulary are terms used to describe the information within a resource. Many systems, like the Library of Congress Classification, began during the 19th century, and use vocabulary that was acceptable at the time. In our modern society, many of the terms are outdated, and in some cases derogatory. Libraries worldwide are working to update controlled vocabulary in a process called decolonization. The process will take time.
When searching for Native American resources, terms like “Native American”, “Natives”, “Indian”, American Indian”, “Indians of North America”, and “Indigenous” will be most helpful to access a wider array of information. We also recommend searching for specific tribes, such as Chickasaw, Dakota Sioux, Ho-Chunk, Illinois, Miami, Shawnee, Potawatomi, Sac and Fox.
In honor of our shared humanity and in recognition of colonial history that denies this truth, we acknowledge that Wilbur Wright College occupies and benefits from the ancestral traditional homelands of the people of the Council of Three Fires (Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa), Menominee, Miami, and Ho-Chunk nations.
Since its forming, the United States has repeatedly, but unsuccessfully, sought to forcibly remove and ethnically cleanse Indigenous people from their homelands. The Indigenous peoples of Chicago have contested and resisted the conquering regimes from the very outset. This sacred land was also a site of trade, travel, gathering, and healing for more than a dozen other Native tribes and is still home to over 100,000 tribal members in the State of Illinois.
Wright College acknowledges and teaches that colonialism is always violent and destructive and is never acceptable and never peaceful. This history of colonization informs our shared future of collaboration and innovation. These lands we stand on are stolen, not purchased, from people who sacrificed their lives and shed blood and tears protecting them. Federal, state, and local governments successfully enforced and continue to enforce policies and practices of displacement, forced assimilation, and disruption including current structural economic inequalities leading to Chicago becoming a major home for urban Indigenous peoples.
Today, Wright College respects and upholds the inherent sovereignty of these Indigenous tribes. Wright College commits to fully recognizing the painful history upon which the City of Chicago government was created, as well as the policies, systems, and structures that continue to oppress and erase Indigenous peoples today.
