Florida State University & Our Relationship with the Seminole Tribe of Florida

Books and other media in the FSU Libraries are organized using categories and terminology that privilege a Western, European worldview. As a result, scholars seeking information about non-Western cultures must often use multiple search strategies to find relevant materials. Researchers interested in discovering materials about the Seminoles and other Indigenous peoples are encouraged to use a combination of Western and Indigenous names and keywords in their search strategies.

The Library of Congress system, which we use at FSU Libraries, has a system of subject headings, or standardized tags that we apply to materials to describe their contents. These, too, often use terminology that may not be used by the Indigenous peoples they describe. For example, library catalogs will use the term "Seminole Indians" in most places. This tag does not distinguish between the Seminole Tribe of Florida and the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, although you can combine "Seminole Indians" with either state name in your search to narrow the results accordingly.  Note that authors may use other terminology or variant spellings, so it's a good idea to try multiple search terms.

Ask a librarian for help developing search terms if you need assistance.

For tips on using the features of OneSearch to refine your search results, try this short demonstration video.

"While there is a great deal of information written on the Seminole Tribe and its history, much of this work suffers from not working with Tribal sources."

This quotation from the Seminole Tribe of Florida, given along with a select bibliography provided on their website, evokes a long history of European and American scholars approaching Native Americans as objects of study rather than as knowledge keepers and scholars in their own right. Many contemporary scholars, both Native and non-Native, are working to undo this unfortunate tradition through relationship building and research collaborations. The field of Native American & Indigenous Studies (NAIS) is just one of many scholarly endeavors in which Indigenous knowledge and methods are being incorporated into the practices of scholars at academic institutions of all types.

We share the bibliographic advice of the Seminole Tribe to "Please be critical readers."

For additional readings about the history of Native peoples in Florida and the U.S. Southeast, consider the following: