Harmful Language Remediation Project: Schitsu’umsh “Native Northwest Online” Project Blog Post

Post written by Elaine Speer, Accessioning Archivist, University of Washington Libraries Special Collections

Introduction
Project Scope and Team
Solutions
Further Information

Introduction

In early 2023 UW Libraries joined with the American Philosophical Society, National Museum of the American Indian, and Washington State University in a 3-year, $334,000 Mellon and CLIR funded collaborative curation project. This project works with nine partner Tribes and Nations: Coeur d’Alene Tribe (ID); Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation (WA); Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (MT); Spokane Tribe of Indians (WA); Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs (OR); Nimíipuu (Nez Perce) Tribe (ID); Quinault Indian Nation (WA); Snoqualmie Indian Tribe (WA); and Yakama Nation (WA) to reconnect Native communities with collections at non-Native repositories.

As part of this work, UW Libraries project lead John Vallier (Curator, Ethnomusicology Archives) identified records to share with the involved Tribes. The Schitsu’umsh Tribe (Coeur d’Alene) reported to UW Libraries through John Vallier the presence of the term ‘Skitswish’ on photograph and textual records shared through this project. The term ‘Skitswish’ is today considered an outdated name for the Tribe. The presence of the term in our records was not only incorrect, but made it appear as an official term to those unfamiliar with the Schitsu’umsh.

Project Scope and Team

Three members of the Critical Cataloging, Archival Description, and Metadata Working Group (CritCat) Crystal Yragui (Book Arts and Science Cataloger, Cataloging and Metadata Services), Elaine Speer (Accessioning Archivist, Special Collections), and Kat Lewis (Special Projects Curator, Special Collections) created a project team to update instances of the term ‘Skitswish’ in records hosted on UW Libraries’ digital collections site, CONTENTdm.

CONTENTdm features photographs, maps, newspapers, posters, reports, and other media from UW Libraries and partner institutions, organized in collections based on subject and origination. One collection, American Indians of the Pacific Northwest, features images and text digitized during a project carried out between 1997-1998 between the University of Washington, the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle, and the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture in Spokane. The project’s aim was to allow students and researchers direct access to important source material on the Northwest Coast and Plateau Indian cultures.

Some images and textual items included in this collection included titles, descriptions, and subject terms using ‘Skitswish’ instead of currently preferred terms. This occurred on photographs donated to the project from the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane, as well as some textual items held by the University of Washington, digitized as part of the project to build the online collection for the American Indians of the Pacific Northwest.

At the time of the initial project, librarians understood the term ‘Skitswish’ to be the preferred or official name for the Schitsu’umsh Tribe. In addition to appearing in titles and descriptions of digital items, the term appeared as a subject heading, as defined at the time by the Library of Congress. Because our digital content system does not automatically update when changes are made to subject headings, unlike OCLC records, all of these fields would need to be updated by Libraries staff.

Solutions

The subject term ‘Skitswish Indians’ was the official Library of Congress subject heading when the records for these items were first created. Since that time it has been replaced with ‘Coeur d’Alene Indians’. Project staff chose Coeur d’Alene Indians as the replacement subject heading rather than Schitsu’umsh because UW Libraries use the Library of Congress Subject Headings, and the current term is Coeur d’Alene Indians. This term may be re-evaluated during an upcoming project at the Library of Congress to re-evaluate terms for Indigenous groups in North America. In the meantime, this project aligns the subject terms used in CONTENTdm with those used across the Libraries.

Terms appearing in titles and descriptions of photographs were changed to the preferred ‘Schitsu’umsh’ by staff. None of the individual records in the digital collections site are duplicated in other records, such as finding aids or catalog records held by the University of Washington Libraries. Therefore, all of the changes for this project were limited to the digital site CONTENTdm. Replaced terms were saved in a non-visible, searchable, deprecated terms field on each edited record to ensure their discovery should any user be more familiar with the previous term.

The project completed all changes in January 2024.

Post written by Elaine Speer

Featured Image Citation:

Schitsu’umsh and Spokane mothers and babies at the Indian Baby Clinic and Contest, Second National Indian Congress, July 1926, UW Order Number: L94-8.5