User:RachAMST

Article Evaluation

The Wikipedia for the Oglala culture of the Lakota people (titled Oglala Lakota), does a good job of addressing relevant information about the topic and does not distract from its intended purpose to provide background information about the Oglala culture. For the most part, this article seems to state facts with very little bias. This is seen specifically when the article describes the presence of Europeans on the Oglala land--simply stating that it "changed" the Oglala way of life, but failing to recognize if this change was positive or negative. In this way, I believe the article fails to recognize specific aggressions committed against the Oglala people and the factual (yet negative) effects colonialism had on their community. All of the citations I checked seemed to be accurate and supported the information in the article, however, I could not check the majority of references due to the fact that they were unlinked books rather than websites and databases. There are many facts presented which fail to reference an appropriate source. The few sources provided for the entire article seem reliable, yet potential bias is only inferred when utilizing the words of specific members of the Oglala community as a source. From what I could tell no information is out of date, however, I do believe there is a significant amount of information that could have been included in this article which was not mentioned. On the talk page for this article, there is a lot of discussion regarding how to improve it. The suggested improvements mostly relate to providing more correct, more detailed, and more modern information. This article is ranked as "Start-class" and is included in the WikiProjects for Indigenous peoples of North America, South Dakota, and Ethic groups. Wikipedia fails to talk about the extent and ramifications of the facts provided. Although it is sufficient for getting background information, it lacks the analysis we discuss in class.