A Note on Sources in Crash Course Native American History

Traditionally we have relied on textbooks, scientific journals, institutional websites, interviews with experts, and high-quality media publications to meet our sourcing standards. But this series needed a slightly different approach.

For this series, we continued to rely on trusted sources we have used in the past while prioritizing articles written from a Native perspective when possible. These include tribal websites, books/papers by Native researchers, interviews, speeches, recordings, tribal archives, and more.

We used historical documents made by Native nations, letters from Native leaders, accounts of Native American experiences in boarding schools. We were cautious and analytical about secondary historical documents, considering any bias that might have been present during their creation.

We recognized that many Native stories are told through oral history and may conflict with written versions. When possible we used oral versions (if a recording was available, and under the guidance of our Native subject matter experts and advisors). We also used tribal publications rather than sticking only to mainstream journalistic sources that we ordinarily prioritize. Our Subject Matter Experts provided guidance and support in carefully assessing the validity of these sources.

We were careful when relaying sacred knowledge and practices, consulting with Subject Matter Experts to understand when and how source material considered sacred should be used. One example of this is our decision to cut an entire episode on Native creation stories. (Learn more in this post)

When particular tribes were featured significantly in an episode, we contacted them whenever possible to approve the language used in the scripts and to request images to use in our videos.

Sometimes tribes would point out mischaracterizations that came from the original source we used. In those cases, we consulted with tribal experts and almost always updated the script to reflect the tribe’s perspective of the story/history.