All Guides: Indigenous Studies: Primary Sources

Primary Sources

A primary source can mean different things depending on the discipline or how one uses the source. However, usually a primary source is the direct, first-hand account or object being studied. Examples include:

Diaries
Letters
Speeches
Interviews

Photographs
Oral narratives
Newspapers
Maps

Video and audio recordings
Art
Film or Literature

In contrast, a secondary source would be something that interprets, analyses, or remarks upon primary sources. Examples include:

Journal articles
Essays
Dissertations

Textbooks
Scholarly books
Documentary films

Search Tips

Primary sources are often collected together and published in book format. In the library's Advanced Search, try combining your topic keywords with one of these terms:

diary OR diaries
letters
"first person"

memoir
oral histories
interviews

autobiograph?
speeches

For example: "Residential schools" AND (diary OR memoir)

Tip: Use quotation marks to search for a phrase (ex. "First Nations"). Use a question mark to truncate a term to search for words with the same stem (ex. Biograph? retrieves Biography, Biographies, Biographical, etc.).

To learn more search tricks, go to Search Strategies.

Search the Library

Archives & Websites

iPortal (by University of Saskatchewan)
A rich collection of primary and secondary sources. Includes scholarly articles, images, recordings, and more.
Indigenous Heritage (Library & Archives Canada)
Treaties, Agreements and Negotiations (Government of Canada)
Indigenous Resources (Archives Association of Ontario)
National Centre for Truth And Reconciliation Archives
Peel's Prairie Provinces
Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre
Internet Archive
Early Canadiana Online

Databases

Use keywords to search for your topic in the following databases:

Frontier Life: Borderlands, Settlement & Colonial Encounters This link opens in a new window
A multi-archive collection of primary sources (letters, images, etc.) that captures the lives, experiences & colonial encounters of people living at the edges of the Anglophone world from 1650-1920. Includes items from Glenbow Museum, Hudson's Bay Company Archives, National Archives (UK), Manitoba Museum, and more.
OurOntario Discovery Portal This link opens in a new window
Includes photographs, maps, videos, audio recordings, government documents, and other media from Ontario organizations, dating back 200 years ago.
ARTstor This link opens in a new window
Over 1.6 million images from architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, and more.
EBSCO eBook Collection This link opens in a new window
Over 10,000 ebooks. Includes titles from the University of Toronto. Multidisciplinary.

Browse all databases

Books

We Remember the Coming of the White Man by Elizabeth Yakeleya; Sarah Simon; Sarah Stewart
Publication Date: 2020
Available from EBSCO eBook Collection
We Remember the Coming of the White Man chronicles the history of the Sahtú (Mountain Dene) and Gwinch'in People in the extraordinary time of the early 20th century. Chapters are transcripts of oral histories by ten Elders about their recollections of the early days of fur trading, guns, and flu pandemic; dismay about the way oil and uranium discoveries and pipelines were handled on their land; and the emotional and economic fallout of the signing of Treaty 11.
Mitoni Niya Nêhiyaw / Cree Is Who I Truly Am by Sarah Whitecalf (As told by); H. C. Wolfart & Freda Ahenakew (Edited and Translated by)
Publication Date: 2021
Available from EBSCO eBook Collection
A highly personal document, these memoirs are altogether exceptional in recounting the thoughts and feelings of a Cree woman as she copes with the challenges of reserve life but also, in a key chapter, with her loneliness while tending a relative's children in a place far away from home - and, apparently just as debilitating, away from the company of other women. Her experiences and reactions throw fresh light on the lives lived by Plains Cree women on the Canadian prairies over much of the twentieth century.
A Two-Spirit Journey by Ma-Nee Chacaby; Mary Louisa Plummer (As told to)
Publication Date: 2016
Ma-Nee Chacaby's extraordinary account of her life as an Ojibwa-Cree lesbian. From her early, often harrowing memories of life and abuse in a remote Ojibwa community riven by poverty and alcoholism, Chacaby's story is one of enduring and ultimately overcoming the social, economic, and health legacies of colonialism.

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Indigenous Studies

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