1. Diversifying the Monoculture of Academic Authority: Teaching Inclusive Conceptions of Authority 
Alexander Watkins, University of Colorado Boulder
bit.ly/loexauthority

2. Changes in how librarians teach authority
Librarians have been teaching students how to recognize scholarly authority for a long time.
Both the superficial markers such as peer-review, credentials, publishers, and other more advanced forms of evaluation.
The Framework challenges us to move beyond this narrow view. Authority is Constructed and Contextual.
It’s tempting to focus on the contextual part of “Constructed and Contextual.”

3. Authority is constructed
That is authority is a cultural construct built on varying knowledge systems and ways of knowing. One way is not inherently better than another.
Other knowledge systems are often kept out of academic discourse because they lack the markers of authority librarians so often teach
What about “Fake News”?

4. Indigenous knowledge as example
Knowledge kept completely out or kept at a remove from academic discourse.
Precisely because it doesn’t have the boxes we ask students to check: credentials from Western universities, peer-review, citation to the scholarly record.
Instead relies on the wisdom of elders, community agreement, and oral tradition.

5. Consequences of this exclusion
“It galls us that Western researchers and intellectuals can assume to know all that is possible to know of us… It appalls us that the West can desire, extract and claim ownership of our ways of knowing, our imagery, the things we create and produce, and then simultaneously reject the people who created and developed those ideas…”
Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London: Zed Books, 1999).

6. A quick discussion of my authority (or lack there of)
I’m not an expert in indigenous ways of knowing
I’ve not experienced exclusion from academia
But as someone who teaches students about authority all the time, I have a responsibility to do it inclusively, and to educate myself about these issues.
I hope to amplify the voices of experts in these areas, and demonstrate their relevance to information literacy.

7. Western Authority as Default
“Experts know how to seek authoritative voices but also recognize that unlikely voices can be authoritative, depending on need.”
“Question traditional notions of granting authority and recognize the value of diverse ideas and worldviews.”
ACRL Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education

8. From Barnhardt, R. , & Kawagley, A. O. (2005)
From Barnhardt, R., & Kawagley, A. O. (2005). Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Alaska Native Ways of Knowing. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 36(1), 8–23.

9. “knowledge is something you do; not a pre-existing tool independent of the person holding it, nor of the uses it might be put.”
Christopher Jocks as quoted in Deborah Doxtator, “Basket, Bead and Quill, and the Making of ‘Traditional’ Art,” in Basket, Bead and Quill, ed. Janet E. Clark (Thunder Bay, Ontario: Thunder Bay Art Gallery, 1996), 12.

10. Policing the Borders of Authority
“In one example when I was a junior professor trying to get tenure, which I will reference as obscurely as possible since it was part of anonymous review, it was held as proof by a reviewer that Indigenous people do not have credible knowledge because some of the Indigenous elders quoted in the article spoke in ungrammatical English”
Powys Whyte, K. (2017, May 7). “Systematic Discrimination in Peer Review: Some Reflections” Retrieved May 8, 2017, from peer-review-reflections/

11. What other communities or ways of knowing are excluded from academic authority? What mechanisms or barriers maintain this exclusion?

12. Who gets to be a secondary source?
Indigenous knowledge (and knowledge from other excluded communities) is often brought into scholarship as a primary source.
“Primary source” is a conditional category, close to the thing under study
It is the thing analyzed, not a thing that does analysis
Support scholars’ interpretations, they don’t interpret
Scholars read “through” their Primary sources to adjust for their biases.

13. Secondary Sources Are vested with scholarly authority
Are where the scholarly conversation happens
Scholars debate and engage with their secondary sources as intellectual equals.

14. When we think of indigenous knowledge only as a primary source
We put it in a subordinate position to scholarly writing.
We are saying it needs to be analyzed and repackaged by scholars before it can constitute authoritative knowledge.
That it is essentially just the raw material for a colonial scholarship.

15. Instead we need to think of indigenous knowledge as a secondary source, authoritative in its own right. It should be engaged with as an equal partner in the conversation.

16. Who gets to be a primary source?
Indigenous scholars who have made it through the academic gauntlet face the opposite problem.
“…our Western education precludes us from writing or speaking from a 'real' and authentic indigenous position.” – Linda Tuhiwi-Smith

17. Integrating into information literacy teaching
Students understand that authority is constructed based on cultural systems of knowledge and ways of knowing.
Students understand that indigenous authority is different from but not less than Western conceptions of authority.
Students question the Western system of authority as default or natural.
Students can identify and explain the different markers of authority in Western and indigenous cultures.
Students seek out native voices and can articulate how and why native understandings of art are different from Western interpretations.
Students are aware of the colonial nature of research on indigenous cultures.

18. Students get it
Students have been receptive or even proactive. They get it.
Might readily recognize the importance of indigenous points of view
Understand the different kinds of information they get from these voices.
Realize they need to evaluate these sources using different criteria.

19. Faculty may be more difficult
They may have restrictive source requirements that mirror and perpetuate the systematic exclusion of indigenous knowledge from academia.
May question class time that isn’t teaching student how to identify scholarly articles
How can we deal with such resistance or what might be some strategies to integrate more inclusive conceptions of authority in library sessions?

20. Teaching students to find indigenous knowledge
This is mostly the easy part! Native publications, Interviews, Oral Histories.
But we want to be cautious about field work.
Linda Tuhiwai Smith lays out the connection of research to colonialism and imperialism, and the pain and hurt research has caused and continues to cause indigenous peoples.
Librarians can help by helping students find existing indigenous knowledge.
Importantly we an help make sure that any knowledge gathered is treated as having authority, and that they are empowering native voices rather than exploiting them.

21. Ways to integrate, build-on, or fold-in
Build on the lessons of classes that already teach colonialism, worldviews or indigenous knowledge.
Integrate class readings, compare with an indigenous source such as an interview with a native artisan.
Use the comparison to teach how to recognize scholarly authority too.
Fold-in to a class that is teaching the difference between primary and secondary sources.
Integrate into a lesson on the multiple communities and stakeholders who create information on a given topic
Add to a discussion of the scholarly conversation and/or information privilege.

22. How might you gather indigenous or practitioner knowledge?
bit.ly/loexauthority
Scholarly Knowledge
Indigenous Knowledge
How or in what form is this knowledge disseminated/communicated?
What kind of people are considered to be authorities in these spheres of knowledge? What qualifies them to be authorities?
Who’s the audience of this knowledge?
What is the purpose of this type of knowledge?
How can each type of knowledge be useful in interpreting and understanding art?
What are three clues or ways that you can tell that a source is scholarly?
How might you gather indigenous or practitioner knowledge?
Do you think that scholarly and indigenous knowledge are compatible? Why or why not?
What might be some of the barriers to indigenous knowledge being valued in a scholarly context?
Explain or describe the significance of the work on the screen from a scholarly or indigenous perspective as assigned. Be prepared to present your description to the class.

23. Communities:
Who is considered an authority in this type of community and why?
Through what ways/information formats do each of these groups communicate their ideas and knowledge?
Where do these communities get information/what constitutes valid evidence in this community
For what purpose, needs or questions would you seek out information from this community?
What advantages as well as difficulties or challenges might there be to using information from this community:
Wikipedia
Gallery
Museum
Academic
Indigenous
How might the requirements of scholarly publications exclude native perspectives and knowledge?
________________________________________________________________________________

24. How could this worksheet be adapted to other research contexts and subject areas? What communities would we put on the sheet? How might we improve the imbalance between western authorities and indigenous ways of knowing?

25. What do you need to enter the circle?
Who is left out of the circle?

26. Thanks everyone! Questions? Discussion?
Lets continue the conversation: