Finding Background & General Information
Below are some examples encyclopedias relevant to Native American and Indigenous studies. To find specific articles in encyclopedias, use UC Library Search.
For example:
- literatures
- "oral tradition" (the quotation marks search as a phrase)
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American Indian Religious Traditions
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Publication Date: 2005This reference work explores indigenous North American religions, religious practices, and rituals. Topics covered include key ideas and issues, religious and political leaders, primary ceremonies, mythic figures, and related cultural subjects, such as basketry, whaling, farming, and bison hunting, which have religious significance for Native peoples. -
Encyclopedia of American Indian History [4 Volumes]
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Publication Date: 2007From the origins of Native American cultures through the years of colonialism and non-Native expansion to the present, this series features the work of many of the field's foremost scholars, and includes the perspectives of both Native and non-Native Americans. It is organized into three thematically organized volumes (covering the period from precontact through European colonization; the years of non-Native expansion (including Indian removal); and the modern era of reservations, reforms, and reclamation of semi-sovereignty). -
The Encyclopedia of Native Music
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Publication Date: 2005The Encyclopedia of Native Music recognizes the multifaceted contributions made by Native recording artists by tracing the history of their commercially released music. It provides an overview spanning over 100 years of recorded Native music while underlining its historical value. -
Encyclopedia of American Indian Civil Rights
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Publication Date: 1997This encyclopedia, designed to meet the curriculum needs of high school and college students, provides the comprehensive coverage of American Indian civil rights issues with more than 600 entries covering a variety of perspectives, issues, individuals, incidents, and court cases central to an understanding of the history of civil rights among American Indian peoples. -
Encyclopedia of Native American Shamanism
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Publication Date: 1998Encyclopedia of Native American Shamanism focuses on "medicine" or sacred ceremonies conducted through shamans in which the power of the Creator is made manifest for all to behold. -
Encyclopedia of the American Indian Movement
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Publication Date: 2013Providing a vital documentation of a controversial and often surprising period in American Indian history, Bruce E. Johansen, a scholar of Native American history, provides detailed entries of historic events and careful analysis; he also frames what occurred in the American Indian Movement personally and anecdotally, drawing from individual stories.
Here are a few samples of dictionaries. To find more, use UC Library Search and search "dictionary" and combine it with any keywords of your choice. For example: dictionary AND evolution. Then select Resource Type > Books.
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Biographical Dictionary of American Indian History
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Publication Date: 2001In more than 1,000 A-to-Z entries, author Carl Waldman profiles men and women who have made significant contributions from early contact until 1900. Not limited to chiefs and war leaders, the book also includes traders, prophets and religious leaders, statesmen, artists and photographers, medicine men and women, and scholars and educators. -
Hand Talk: Sign Language Among American Indian Nations
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Publication Date: 2010American Indian nations of the Great Plains and cultural groups bordering this geographic area spoke so many different languages that verbal communication between them was difficult. As extensive trade networks developed and political alliances became necessary, an elegant language of the hands developed that cut across spoken language barriers. Though now endangered, this sign language continues to serve a vital role in traditional storytelling, rituals, legends, prayers, conversational narratives, and as a primary language of American Indians who are deaf. -
Dictionary of Indian Tribes of the Americas
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Publication Date: 1993
Here are a few samples of handbooks and manuals. To find more, use UC Library Search and search the keywords (handbook OR manual) and combine it with any keywords of your choice. For example: (handbook OR manual) AND Indigenous. Then select Resource Type > Books, and filter by recent years.
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Routledge Handbook of Critical Indigenous Studies
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ISBN: 9780429802379Publication Date: 2020The first comprehensive overview of the rapidly expanding field of Indigenous scholarship, featuring Indigenous scholars who provide critical understandings of indigeneity in relation to ontology (ways of being), epistemology (ways of knowing), and axiology (ways of doing) with a view to providing insights into how Indigenous peoples and communities engage and examine the worlds in which they are immersed. -
Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies
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Publication Date: 2008The Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies is the only handbook to make connections regarding many of the perspectives of the "new" critical theorists and emerging indigenous methodologies. Editors Norman K. Denzin, Yvonna S. Lincoln, and Linda Tuhiwai Smith explore in depth some of the newer formulations of critical theories and many indigenous perspectives, and seek to make transparent the linkages between the two. -
The Oxford Handbook of American Indian History
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Publication Date: 2016The Oxford Handbook of American Indian History presents an accurate and comprehensive history of the indigenous peoples who lived--and live--in the territory that became the United States. Thirty-two leading experts, both Native and non-Native, describe the historical developments of the past 500 years in American Indian history, focusing on significant moments of upheaval and change, histories of indigenous occupation, and overviews of Indian community life. -
The Oxford Handbook of Indigenous Sociology
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Publication Date: 2023The Oxford Handbook of Indigenous Sociology is, in part, a response to the limited space allowed for Indigenous Peoples within the discipline of sociology. The very small existing sociological literature locates the Indigenous within the non-Indigenous gaze and the Eurocentric structures of the discipline reflect a continuing reluctance to actively recognize Indigenous realities within the key social forces literature of class, gender, and race at the discipline's center. They do not speak back to sociology, but rather, claim their own sociological space. The starting point is to situate Indigenous sociology as sociology by Indigenous sociologists.
