I just found out that my Searching for Paumanok research was cited in the Library of Congress’ Program for Cooperative Cataloging April 10, 2025 Final Report on Metadata Related to Indigenous Peoples of the Americas.

A big theme of my data research is on Indigenous socio-technical issues in data. I have a B.A. in American Indian Studies, I’ve published/given invited talks/worked with tribes around the world.

A big part of my career is geared toward this because Indigenous data issues highlight larger systemic data complexities we see in DAM, development, systems, copyright law, taxonomy labor, and more. This is because archives form the basis of society; Indigenous relations (knowledge, data, bodies, materials) can be found globally in all types of archives (e.g. bank records, government documents, foundation archives).

Searching for Paumanok Research

In 2021 I co-authored a research study with my long-time collaborator Kristen Nyitray in Cataloging & Classification Quarterly on Library of Congress Authorities related to Indigenous Long Island. We called it “Searching for Paumanok” in reference to a Walt Whitman 1867 quote about Long Island, New York.

Some key points

  • words and terms used to describe, organize, and classify Indigenous peoples/communities/place names weren’t really available or accurate in the LC Authorities
  • existing and omitted terms showed biases based along the lines of recognition politics (e.g. terms existed for federally-recognized tribes) and erasure myths (e.g. there were a lot of localities terms but not peoples suggesting Indigenous peoples don’t exist anymore but places do)
  • LC Authorities got confused about kin networks and historical diaspora; our research explored Lenni Lenapes and Lenape-related peoples words and despite there being seven federally and/or state recognized Lenape peoples, the NAR (Name Authority Record) for Lenapes only recognizes the Delaware Tribe of Indians

Since 2021, we’ve published a second part of the research in Cataloging & Classification Quarterly on our methods, produced a cataloger “cheat-sheet” for the existing LC Authorities, and gave several talks at conferences/professional groups on this research.