Collective leadership and participation with indigenous matters: Redefining indigenous literacy

Abstract

Let’s say you work in a research or academic library that models traditional approaches to leadership, management, services and service delivery, and your library is interested in becoming a better workplace that attracted, retained, and developed indigenous staff, as well as transformed its service and service delivery to better include, involve, and implement indigenous language, culture, and ways of knowing. If it excelled at indigenous inclusion, how would people treat indigenous staff and students differently? What kinds of interactions would be visible in any new integrated service you developed? How would you reflect the local indigenous language and culture in your library? What kinds of new behaviors would be common? And what ingrained behaviors would be gone? If these questions raised concern or confusion, it may be that your academic or research library lacks the indigenous literacy required to make positive and sustainable transformation in this area; therefore, it is suggested that collective leadership and participation with indigenous matters will help address this.