NICOLA ANDREWS  CURRENT POSITION Open Education Librarian, University of San Francisco DEGREE MLIS, University of Washington, 2017; Master of Indigenous Studies, University of Otago, New Zealand, 2021 FOLLOW linkedin.com/in/maraebrarian; nicolaandrews.neocities.org Photo by Joseph Miller

SANDY LITTLETREE  CURRENT POSITION Assistant Professor, University of Washington Information School DEGREE MLIS, University of Texas at Austin, 2006; PhD, Information Science, University of Washington, 2018 FOLLOW ischool.uw.edu/people/faculty/profile/sandy505; sandylittletree.net; linkedin.com/in/slittletree Photo by Doug Parry, University of Washington Information School

Relational Accountability

Nicola Andrews and Sandy Littletree, both passionate advocates for Indigenous librarians and librarianship, are coauthors (with 2022 LJ Mover & Shaker Jesse Loyer) of “Information as a Relation: Defining Indigenous Information Literacy.” According to Littletree, the collaboration came from “this desire to talk about what Indigenous librarians are experiencing on the ground and the different practices and ways that Indigenous librarians, particularly in academia, have been drawing on their ways of knowing in their practice and teaching.” 

Andrews, a Pacific Islander/Māori immigrant from Aotearoa, New Zealand, is the Open Education Librarian at the University of San Francisco. She has a robust background in writing about Indigenous librarianship; reviewers called her thesis, “Historical Trauma, Indigenous People, and Libraries,” “the first to deeply explore the traumatic impact of libraries on Indigenous library workers.”

Andrews’s work challenges the idea that libraries are inherently welcoming, as many are built on Indigenous lands, some by incarcerated peoples. In her work with Littletree, Andrews identified the need for libraries to hire more Indigenous workers and focus on retaining them. “When Indigenous people…work in libraries, they are overwhelmingly tapped as a cultural resource,” so that burnout can become a factor, she explains. Also, institutions like libraries make changes slowly, Andrews notes, but want users to respond quickly. Indigenous users might be dealing with “a library that was full of racist material 30 or 50 years ago and wouldn’t let your grandfather come in, so if they’re serious about the work, they…have to commit for decades.”

Sandy Littletree (Navajo/Eastern Shoshone) is an assistant professor at the University of Washington Information School. Her work on Indigenous information literacy, she explains, sprang from “a desire to talk about what Indigenous librarians are experiencing, their different practices, philosophies, and the ways we’ve been drawing on ways of knowing and teaching.” Littletree emphasizes the idea of relationality, described in her and Andrews’s paper as encompassing relationships between people but also “a web of responsibility and relational accountability to land, water, plants, animals, languages, and ceremonies,” and is one of the Indigenous ways of knowing that builds Indigenous information literacy. In 2024, the authors presented their paper at the International Indigenous Librarians’ Forum in O‘ahu, Hawai‘i. The reaction from the audience, mostly Indigenous librarians, was positive. Many approached Littletree to say “it made them feel validated,” notes Littletree. “People came up to us in tears—it was the first time they felt seen. It’s not something to celebrate but we were able to bring out something that was really important.”