Mukurtu: Information Retrieval System Engineered for Indigenous Individuals and Communities

This paper will examine the Mukurtu content management system (CMS) developed by researchers at Washington State University to address specific needs of Indigenous individuals and Indigenous communities worldwide. Mukurtu is based on the open-source DRUPAL platform and utilizes many aspects unique to that platform, such as role-based permission systems, which are utilized to construct the Traditional Knowledge Licensing hierarchy used in Mukurtu. Finally, a comparison between a tribal library’s web portal located in Washington State that uses the Mukurtu format and one in the same area that utilizes the industry dominant CONTENTdm CMS is performed.