LibGuides: American Indian &amp; Indigenous Studies: Environmental Research & Advocacy

Environmental Research & Activism

What kind of information can help with questions about indigenous ecology, the environment, sustainability, environmental justice, preserving water and land resources, etc.? There are many approaches to this area of study, considering what you want to know and where you might find related information can be helpful. Here are a few places to look.

Indigenous ways of knowing- Often found in books, indigenous-focused journals, or directly from Elders and indigenous groups.
Scientific research- Most often found in research articles in peer-reviewed journals and scientific databases.
Statistics and data - Statistics can help establish a problem or generate a hypothesis. Information such as the daily temperature, water level, crop yield, etc. can lay the foundation for many inquiries. Statistics are often gathered by government and non-profit research groups. They may be freely available to the public online, or in research articles.
Social science & health research- The impact of environmental issues on people, health, and society. Most often found in research articles in peer-reviewed journals and scientific databases.
Reference works - Help establish facts and identify things. For example, identify native plant and bird species. This includes encyclopedias, dictionaries, and some databases.
News - News can help give up to the minute and local information about environmental issues, activist groups, laws, and more.
Laws & Governmental Info - Laws that regulate land and water use, policies that effect pollution and industrial impacts on the environment, as well as the government agencies that oversee them.

Useful Databases

Biological & Agricultural Full Text This link opens in a new window
Contains citations also links to PDF page images, graphs, charts, diagrams, photos, and illustrations in biological and agricultural areas.
GeoBase This link opens in a new window
Indexes with abstracts to more than 2,200 international journals and magazines covering the worldwide literature on geology, geography, and ecology.
GreenFILE This link opens in a new window
Focuses on the relationship between human beings and the environment, with well-researched information on topics ranging from global warming to recycling to alternate fuel sources and beyond.
Comprised of 600 scholarly and general interest titles in index and abstract format, as well as government documents and reports, GreenFILE offers a unique perspective on the positive and negative ways humans affect the ecology. Drawing on the connection between the environment and disciplines such as agriculture, education, law, health and technology, GreenFILE serves as an informative resource for anyone concerned about the issues facing our planet. Coverage: 1913-current.
OneFile: Environmental Studies and Policy This link opens in a new window
The Environmental Studies & Policy Collection provides access to more than 5.4 million articles from more than 300 journals and book reference content from Delmar, including Soil, Science, and Management and more.
ScienceDirect This link opens in a new window
ScienceDirect hosts over 3,800 journals and more than 37,000 books—over 14 million peer-reviewed publications..
Features:
- Index with abstracts to over 1,700 scientific journals published by Elsevier. At CSULA our use of this database permits access to over 900 Elsevier journals in full-text online format
- The 900 full-text journals represent all Elsevier journals currently under (print) subscription at all CSU and University of California libraries. These libraries represent the consortium which negotiated this ScienceDirect database subscription. We are not permitted full-text access to the remaining 200 Elsevier journal titles in this collection, but users can retrieve citations and abstracts from these journals using the collection's search interface
- Coverage: Varies from January 1995 - the present; most titles are from 1998 - the present
Environmental Issues Online This link opens in a new window
Environmental Studies is a multidisciplinary field, where solutions to real-world issues lie at the intersections of the social sciences, the biological and earth sciences, the humanities, legal studies, and policy. This database uses text, archival primary sources, and video to address major past and ongoing environmental issues.

Social Sciences Full Text This link opens in a new window
Provides access to full-text articles in over 600 periodicals in sociology, psychology, anthropology, geography, economics, political science, and law.
Full text coverage begins in 1994, abstracting begins in 1984 and indexing begins in 1983
CINAHL Plus with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Provides indexing for 3,024 journals from the fields of nursing and allied health and provides full text for hundreds of journals, plus legal cases, clinical innovations, critical paths, drug records, research instruments and clinical trials.
Articles that are not yet available in this database are available in Pre-CINAHL. CINAHL Support Center
The Support Center web site provides a wide variety of support and training tools designed to help you learn how to get the most from CINAHL databases via the EBSCOhost interface.
Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database This link opens in a new window
The database contains a comprehensive listing of brand name product ingredients available. The Brand Product Report for each brand name product provides a quick summary of safety, effectiveness, drug interactions, and adverse effects for each ingredient contained in the product.
SocIndex with Full-Text This link opens in a new window
Covers a broad range of studies, including gender studies, criminal justice, social psychology, religion, racial studies and social work. In addition to full-text journals, SocINDEX with Full Text contains informative abstracts for core coverage journals dating as far back as 1895. Complete with extensive indexing for books, monographs, conference papers and other non-periodical content sources, the database also includes searchable cited references.
PubMed This link opens in a new window
PubMed comprises over 23 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content in library subscription databases, from PubMed Central, and publisher web sites.
GUIDES:
The PubMed User Guide provides the information in search, cite, save, share, and other areas. Please visit the Guide for guidance. To learn more about how to navigate PubMed, visit PubMed Tutorial.

National Centers for Environmental Information This link opens in a new window
National Centers for Environmental Information provides climate, historical weather data, informationlocal climatological data, climatological data, storm data, hourly precipitation data, and monthly climatic data for the world.
Its national summary data include a national general summary of weather conditions, observed extremes of temp & precip by states, climatological data by station, heating degree/cooling degree days, flood data and losses, and storm summaries. Upper air data, sunshine and solar radiation data are also summarized.

Birds of the World This link opens in a new window
Birds of the World (BOW) is a database of species accounts of the world’s birds. Each account contains information on distinguishing characteristics, distribution, systematics, behavior, ecology, demography, conservation, and priorities for future research.

Agencies and NGOs

EPA- Environmental Justice for Tribes and Indigenous Peoples
The Environmental Protection Agency
U.S. Department of the Interior
The U.S. Department of the Interior protects and manages the Nation’s natural resources and cultural heritage; provides scientific and other information about those resources; and honors its trust responsibilities or special commitments to American Indians, Alaska Natives, and affiliated Island Communities.
Indigenous Environmental Network
Established in 1990 within the United States, IEN was formed by grassroots Indigenous peoples and individuals to address environmental and economic justice issues (EJ). IEN’s activities include building the capacity of Indigenous communities and tribal governments to develop mechanisms to protect our sacred sites, land, water, air, natural resources, health of both our people and all living things, and to build economically sustainable communities.IEN accomplishes this by maintaining an informational clearinghouse, organizing campaigns, direct actions and public awareness, building the capacity of community and tribes to address EJ issues, development of initiatives to impact policy, and building alliances among Indigenous communities, tribes, inter-tribal and Indigenous organizations, people-of-color/ethnic organizations, faith-based and women groups, youth, labor, environmental organizations and others. IEN convenes local, regional and national meetings on environmental and economic justice issues, and provides support, resources and referral to Indigenous communities and youth throughout primarily North America – and in recent years – globally.

University Library

American Indian & Indigenous Studies

Environmental Research & Activism

Useful Databases

Agencies and NGOs