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Paper short abstract:

The Respectful Terminology Platform Project is an Indigenous-led multi-year project aimed at creating a permanent, sustainable online platform providing access to dynamic, multilingual source for terminology and vocabulary sets that can be applied to Indigenous people and their knowledge systems.

Paper long abstract:

The Respectful Terminology Platform Project (RTPP). The RTPP is an Indigenous-led multi-year project to be completed over six years to create a permanent and sustainable online platform that will be a dynamic, multilingual source for terminology and vocabulary sets that can be applied to Indigenous Peoples, places, heritage, tradition, knowledge, and cultures within the country now known as Canada.

In many organizations, information systems, and collections, sources of subject terms used for Indigenous peoples and their knowledge and cultures are rooted in colonial systems, concepts of the world, with many terms developed by government organizations to record the stolen material culture and related to the control of Indigenous peoples. Lacking accessible and efficient alternatives, outdated language continued to be used in numerous libraries, archives, and government agencies.

The RTPP is intended to address the gap by not only providing more appropriate, community-vetted subject terms, but also lower the barrier for adoption via the development of a shared, accessible, open source community platform thus answering the urgent need to address problematic terms. Furthermore, the development of an Indigenous-led cataloguing platform which centres Indigenous governance, including Indigenous data principles such as CARE, moves to ensure Indigenous sovereignty and ways of working are core.

This presentation will outline the project’s beginnings, its goals, and focus on the ways that it furthers the work of reconciliation in the country now known as Canada. The presentation will also discuss the connection between the RTPP, governance, and the movement toward reparative cataloguing.