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First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Research

Plan Your Search

Searching library databases is different from searching Google or other search engines. You need to use different techniques to find what you need. One strategy is to search using keywords.

Libraries are colonial structures and how information is organized within these structures reflects these colonial structures. Additionally, terms used to refer to Indigenous nations have changed as Indigenous people reclaim their names, you may need to employ multiple terms some of which may be outdated or offensive.

Sample topic: How has Indigenous land defense impacted Canadian politics?

1. Identify the main concepts or the most important parts of your topic.

How has Indigenous land defense impacted Canadian politics?

Concepts: Indigenous, land defense, politics and and Canada. 

Avoid using general terms like "effects”, “impacts” or "challenges" and try to use more specific terms.

2. Combine the different concepts using AND to find sources with all of the concepts

Indigenous AND  "land defense" AND Canad* AND politics

3. Think of other keywords, synonyms, related words, and spellings for each of these concepts to get better search results. Use OR between the synonyms and keywords.

Indigenous OR "First Nations" OR Aborig* OR Native OR "Indians of North America" OR Inuit OR Métis

Tip: Use quotation marks (") to search for exact phrases such as "First Nations"

Tip: Use an asterisk (*) to find variant endings, spellings for a root word. Example: Canad* will retrieve words starting with the root Canad, such as Canada, Canadian, Canadians etc.

4. Combine the keywords and synonyms into a search such as the following:

Indigenous OR "First Nations" OR Aboriginal OR Native OR "Indians of North America" OR Inuit OR Métis

AND

"land defen*" OR "water protector" OR "land protector" OR "environmental defen*"

AND

Canad*

AND

Politic* OR "Public Affairs" OR Government

Omni is our library search interface. It allows you to search York University Library's Catalogue and those of our partner institutions. 

Omni is a great place to start your research. Use Omni if you want to:

  • Explore research topics
  • Find an exact book or article
  • Browse journal titles
  • Find specific formats (e.g. newspapers, ebooks)

Know that when you use OMNI you may receive an overwhelming number of results. These results will come from a myriad of disciplines, you may need to work harder to locate relevant articles and some of the journals that we have access to are not indexed in Omni so it is a good idea to also check out discipline-specific databases. Discipline-specific databases may also have additional filters that are highly relevant to your area of research.

To evaluate your search results, consider the relevance, format, and date of publication of each item.  

Relevance Format Year of publication
  • Look at the title of the source – is it on topic? 
  • What subject headings do you see on the resource?
  • What format do you need? A book? A scholarly or peer-reviewed article?
  • Many databases provide options that allow you to limit to a particular format.
  • Is it important to have historical or the most current information?
  • If so, use database options to limit/sort your results by date.  
Too many results? Too few results?

Add more specific concepts with the AND operator

  • Example: Indigenous AND "land defense" AND politics AND Canada

Use more general search terms

  • Example: politics instead of "political discourse"

Use database search filters

  • Example: filter by date, publication type, language (and/or other criteria)

Add more synonyms or related terms with the OR operator

  • Example: Indigenous OR "First Nations"

Limit your search to a specific part of the document

  • Example: limit to the title, or abstract, or subject

Use truncation to broaden your search by using the asterisk

  • Example: Canad* will include results for Canada, Canadian