1 Traditional and Emergent Indigenous Citation Practices in Relation with Academic MLA Style Citation

“In Secwepemc convention, the people who are experts and bearers of knowledge are explicitly acknowledged and recognized by name, in the spirit of “oral footnoting,” to show the sources, and thus authority, of information that is provided to an audience.” (Ignace 2008, p. 44-45)

Starting with the Land and Place

Site:ation

Anishinaabe scholar, jurist and a member of the Order of Canada (2021), John Burrows who specializes and lectures on both Canadian and Indigenous law, coined the term “site:ation” arguing that “In my view, land-based legal “site:ation” should take place in every law school across Canada. Law should be studied by directly experiencing and analyzing law’s interactions with the physical world” (Burrows, 4).

Borrows, John. “Outsider Education: Indigenous Law and Land-based Learning.” Windsor Yearbook  on Access to Justice vol. 33, no. 1, 2016, pp. 1-27.

Site/ation

Secwepemc and settler artist and curator, Tania Willard, is a professor at UBC Okanagan. She has coined a concept and practice she calls “site/ation”.  Willard works with and plays with western notions of citation and possession in academic and non-academic contexts such as the conceptual, theoretical, practice and material space called “bush” gallery.

Ethics and Integrity Practices

As the previous section suggests, citation and what is known as “academic integrity” are really about practicing ethics. At its core, this means attributing knowledge to the originators, accurately explaining how you received the knowledge, and ensuring that knowledge is used with the originators’ consent. As you may be aware, many colonial researchers have not followed these ethical practices in relation to Indigenous knowledges. A key, but particularly fraught ethical concept is consent. For a person or community to grant consent to participate in research or share information. they must do so without coercion (voluntarily), with full knowledge of how the information may be used (informed), and with the right to retract consent as the research situation evolves (ongoing consent). Several concepts are related to these ideas; for example, for consent to be informed people must be made aware of the risks and benefits of participating in research. Similarly, to protect participants and prevent coercion or misuse of the research, confidentiality and access to information should be considered, both for researchers and participants, as should potential conflicts of interest. See the section on Digital Media Communications in Chapter 8 for examples of research ethics in practice.

As noted above, IK has often been used without consent, without considering risks and benefits to participants, and without respect for Indigenous cultural protocols. Therefore, Greg Younging makes the following recommendations for working with traditional and oral knowledges:

Indigenous style recognizes Traditional Knowledge and Oral Traditions as Indigenous cultural property, owned by Indigenous Peoples and over which Indigenous Peoples exert control. This recognition has bearing on permission and copyright, and applies even when non-Indigenous laws do not require it.

Writers, editors, and publishers should make every effort to ensure that Indigenous Protocols are followed in the publication of Traditional Knowledge and Oral Traditions. Where culturally sensitive Indigenous materials are in question, writers, editors, and publishers should make every effort to consult an authoritative member of the particular Indigenous People for confirmation. (101)

Mechanics of Integrating Sources

“Relationships don’t just shape Indigenous reality, they are our reality. Indigenous researchers develop relationships with ideas in order to achieve enlightenment in the ceremony that is Indigenous research. Indigenous research is the ceremony of maintaining accountability to these relationships.” – Shawn Wilson, Research is Ceremony

Including sources ethically involves two stages or kinds of relationships: the first is what happens in the body of your writing or media piece, while the second is what happens at the end of the writing or media piece.  This section will focus on integrating sources in the body of your work, while the section below focuses on end references.

As the quotation that starts this section explains, integrating sources is about describing the relationships between researchers and between researchers and yourself as the writer or creator of a work. As in most conversations and relationships, people might agree or disagree with each other, support or give more detail about something, or refer to previous knowledge as a background for their ideas. When referring to sources, you want to explain your stance or relationship to the knowledge you are including, as well as acknowledge that you are building on previous information. A reminder at this point that, as explained earlier in this guide, conventional language around research is extractive, involving phrases like “using” and “finding” sources (indeed, the idea of “resources,” often used to describe research, overlaps with extractive environmental practices); we have tried as much as possible to avoid replicating that here and instead approach these concepts in a more respectful way.

As in relationships and conversations, writers can include others’ perspectives in multiple ways. The three main ways academic writers do this are:

Citing Indigenous Knowledges

Scholars have found that current citation practices do not adequately recognize oral and land-based knowledges, and also need to include more Indigenous perspectives (a concept called “citation justice”). This section looks at ways Indigenous scholars are revising academic practices to better suit their research needs and provides you with resources to build on this work.

In Why Indigenous Literatures Matter, Daniel Heath Justice concludes with an essay on “Citational Relations” rather than a typical reference list of names and titles. He explains this choice as part of re-thinking a system which has privileged “the same small circle of [white male] voices” and as instead enabling a fuller “conversation about the embraided influences of words, ideas, and voices” (242). A discussion of relationships, reciprocities and influences, rather than a list of references, is one compelling way to revise existing practices.

James Smith Cree Nation scholar Lorisia MacLeod has likewise sought to redress omissions in academic citation practices by developing guidelines for citing Elders and Knowledge Keepers. MacLeod’s format for citing in MLA contexts is as follows:

Please consult the Norquest College Indigenous Education Citation Guide for more information.

The land itself, which contains a wealth of knowledge and information, is not typically cited in traditional academic formats. This omission also needs to be addressed and scholars are currently developing templates. As you consider the details of MLA referencing below, consider what practices might be culturally appropriate for citing knowledge in your community.

Collaborating with an Elder in Creating a Citation of a Story from the Oral Tradition

An example of how scholars are indigenizing academic practices to align with Indigenous Peoples’ citation practices in the Oral Tradition is Katzie Coast Salish scholar Kerrie Charnley’s collaboration with a guest Elder in her 100-level English course in order to create a citation for the Oral Tradition story that he shared with the class.

MLA Essentials

Modern Language Association (MLA) is one of the most common citation formats used in academic writing. American Psychological Association (APA) and Chicago styles are also used in several disciplines. In this resource, we will cover MLA style, but we encourage you to consult the following resources if you need information about Chicago or APA styles. For APA style, please see APA Style Online, OWL Purdue, UBC Library Resources.  For Chicago style, please see OWL Purdue, Chicago Manual of Style, UBC Library Resources.

In-text MLA Citation

MLA uses a parenthetical format, rather than the superscript numbers and footnotes you may have seen in other readings. This means that in MLA style the citation information in-text will look something like this:

In MLA, the parenthetical citation usually includes the original author’s surname and the page number (or numbers) for the information you are using. For example:

The citation is usually placed at the end of the sentence. Sometimes, however, you may only be referring to source information for part of the sentence and the rest of the sentence is your own idea; in those situations you can put the citation at the end of the part of the sentence that is based on the source and finish with your own idea (which will not need to be cited).

There are variations on the basic MLA format. The following table shows how to deal with some common variations that may occur when you are citing in-text in MLA:

MLA Works Cited

Once you have signaled, cited and explained your sources in-text, the last step is to include the end reference for all sources that you used. The end reference, called “Works Cited” in MLA, provides full information so that a reader can locate the source and potentially read more or verify the ideas. It is important that the information in-text matches or corresponds to the end references (there should not, for example, be sources cited or signaled in-text that are not in the works cited list or works listed at the end that are not cited or signaled in-text). In academic contexts, readers expect to be able to locate all your sources and to know where and how you used them.

The following examples show three of the most common end reference formats, but of course you may need to cite other kinds of sources (such as a book chapter or a film). Please do not hesitate to consult these sites for more information: MLA Style Guide Online, OWL Purdue, UBC Library Resources

Additional Resource:

Charnley, Kerrie. “Why We Capitalize the ‘I’ in Indigenous.” Presentation. Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies. The University of British Columbia Okanagan Campus, April 1, 2021.

Younging, Gregory. Elements of Indigenous Style. Brush Publishing, 2018.