As soon as you’ve crafted a search string, chosen your core documents, and decided on a narrative to weave them together, you’ve engaged in politics. Making some choices to include some things means leaving other things out. Search engine terms seem politically benign, but they can make some types of knowledge readily accessibly and hide others. How might you create a literature review that aligns with Indigenous self-determination and against extraction?

Further reading

• Hawkins, Kaitlyn. (2021). “The Researchers That Search Engines Make Invisible.” CLEAR (blog), June 10. https://civiclaboratory.nl/2021/06/10/the-researchers-that-search-engines-make-invisible/.
• Liboiron, Max. (2021). “Firsting in Research.” Discard Studies (blog). https://discardstudies.com/2021/01/18/firsting-in-research/.
• Liu, Rui. (2023). Citing toward Community, Citing against Harm. CLEAR (blog), March 2. https://civiclaboratory.nl/2023/03/20/citing-toward-community-citing-against-harm/
• Soto, Alexander, Heart Sanchez, J. M. Mueller-Alexander, and J. Martin. (2021). Researching Native Americans: Reflections on Vocabulary, Search Strategies, and Technology . Online Searcher, 45(5), 10-19.