“If You Want the History of a White Man, You Go to the Library” ¹

1. Paul E. Bushnell. The Black Women in the Middle West Project: A Comprehensive Resource Guide, Illinois and Indiana. Vol. 81 (Illinois State Historical Society 1988), 152.

: Critiquing Our Legacy, Addressing Our Library Collections Gaps

ABSTRACT

In 1864, the same year the University of Denver was founded by John Evans, then the territorial governor of Colorado and the superintendent of Indian affairs, a group of U.S. militia attacked and killed vulnerable members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho nations at Sand Creek. Using critical race theory and the feminist “ethic of care,” we critique our collections in terms of the massacre and absent Native American voices in order to develop a collecting philosophy and direction to acknowledge and address the gaps and to formulate strategies for teaching students to interrogate a predominately white institutional archive to give voice to the absent or silenced.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical pedagogy
• critical race theory
• inclusive archives
• Native Americans
• Sand Creek Massacre

Notes

1. Paul E. Bushnell. The Black Women in the Middle West Project: A Comprehensive Resource Guide, Illinois and Indiana. Vol. 81 (Illinois State Historical Society 1988), 152.