Research is an ironically personal thing; it’s so specific to each person and how their brain works best. Do they need to make a whole list of questions and work their way systematically through the information? Do they start specific and work their way outwards or do they do the opposite? Or do they need to just throw themselves into the topic and start digging? I tend to be a solid mix of all of them, depending on the topic at hand and how much prior knowledge I have about said topic.
Knowing me (and given what we have already looked at in class), I would probably want to dive into the indigenous perspective surrounding the Penn’s Treaty painting we looked at in class as a group; how it came to be, how they felt with it being enacted, the impacts it had on their lives, that sort of thing. Firstly, I’m just curious to know more about how the indigenous people felt interacting with the colonists (beyond the assumption that they were rather unhappy with them showing up and trying to take over everything because of their major superiority complex). In terms of locating sources for this information, I’d likely start with the Knox Primo to try to find the general context for the situation, and then branch out into the specialized search engines offered through the library (like Academic Search Complete, JSTOR, America: History & Life) to try to find more information about who specifically was involved with the creation of Penn’s Treaty, what channels it had to go through to be approved, and then try to find out which Native groups were involved with that. From there, I would likely work my way through any available information about said Native group, and potentially reach out to contact them if I cannot find strong information about them. For lack of digitized information, I’d likely have to reach out to the groups involved or to the local museums or archives around where Penn’s Treaty was negotiated and implemented to accrue any information that may not have been digitized yet, or to speak with someone about the information I’d need and hopefully they could either Zoom and show me the document or tell me about it, or email and ask a multitude of questions to cover all my bases first through home. With that, I would try to piece together all of the information accrued through reading, testimony, secondary sources analyzing the treaty, the colonists, and the Native groups. If I was struggling to find information in this specific realm, I might broaden it to the Native groups in a larger area to accommodate a wider amount of available information.
Annemarie– I completely agree that research is a personal thing and everyone has a process that works best for them. I am definitely an “outline” type of person, and in some cases, my outlines will be longer than the thing I am actually writing!
The second part of your blog that looks more intricately at the significance of the encounter behind Penn’s Treaty hits on an important point. There is something about the painting that flattens the narrative into a myth and requires further questioning and historical context. In addition to conducting online research, speaking with community members would be another important step. Too many researchers are still not willing to do the “work” of collaboration, even though that is a very critical step whenever you are doing work that represents Native people. Many members of a community would be willing to help as long as you are coming from a place of integrity and you’re willing to give back to the community in some kind of way.