SpT 3202 - Multiculturalism and Indigenous Knowledge for Libraries: Home

Multiculturalism refers to the "co-existence of diverse cultures, where culture includes racial, religious, or cultural groups and is manifested in customary behaviours, cultural assumptions and values, patterns of thinking, and communicative styles."

Who are Indigenous Peoples?
Practicing unique traditions, they retain social, cultural, economic and political characteristics that are distinct from those of the dominant societies in which they live.

Considering the diversity of indigenous peoples, an official definition of “indigenous” has not been adopted by any UN-system body. Instead the system has developed a modern understanding of this term based on the following: 

• Self- identification as indigenous peoples at the individual level and accepted by the community as their  member. 
• Historical continuity with pre-colonial and/or pre-settler societies 
• Strong link to territories and surrounding natural resources 
• Distinct social, economic or political systems 
• Distinct language, culture and beliefs 
• Form non-dominant groups of society 
• Resolve to maintain and reproduce their ancestral environments and systems as distinctive peoples and communities.

Indigenous Culture and Knowledge 
Indigenous peoples are the holders of unique languages, knowledge systems and beliefs and possess invaluable  knowledge of practices for the sustainable management of natural resources. They have a special relation to and use of their traditional land. Their ancestral land has a fundamental importance for their collective physical and  cultural survival as peoples. Indigenous peoples hold their own diverse concepts of development, based on their traditional values, visions, needs and priorities (Source: United Nations).

Ten Reasons to Offer Multicultural Library Services (from IFLA)

1. A library’s mission is to serve its community, which in many cases is multicultural and multilingual, or becoming increasingly culturally diverse.
2. Multicultural and multilingual library services ensure equality of service and access to information.
3. In an era of globalization with more ease in transborder communication and travel, individuals need to learn about other cultures, languages, and peoples, which foster appreciation for different experiences and broaden one’s outlook on life.
4. Information in languages and through channels accessible to diverse user communities enables their democratic participation in civil society.
5. Information on one’s own heritage as well as others reinforces one’s own culture and promotes understanding of other experiences and perspectives, respectively, and contributes in the development of a more harmonious society.
6. Information in languages and through channels appropriate to diverse user communities promotes multiple literacies, which facilitate the acquisition of new knowledge and skills to ensure equality of opportunity in all realms of civil society.
7. The world’s knowledge, creative forms of expression, and cultural practices are documented in diverse formats and languages, thus, the offering of a multicultural collection should be made available for all to access.
8. Learning of different forms of creative expression, work and problem solving lead to fresh insights and opinions which can result in novel ways to innovate, act and resolve situations
9. Information about and for a library’s multicultural community demonstrates that community members and their cultures are valued.
10. Libraries are spaces for intellectual and recreational engagement and libraries offering multicultural and multilingual services, and collections become a community space to bring people together.