T05: Libraries Ignite! Implementing the TRC Calls to Action
Session Description
Generously Sponsored By: Archambault
Prepare to be unsettled and activated with this collaborative session about libraries responding to the TRC Recommendations. In 2015, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its “Calls to Action:” 94 recommendations based on six years of statement gathering, archaeological and historic research, document compilation, and community events documenting the abhorrent history of and pain caused by intergenerational impacts of Indian Residential Schools in Canada. To date, professional library organizations in Canada have been shockingly absent in response to these recommendations. This Ignite session led by members of the BCLA First Nations Interest Group will end the silence. The first part of the session will briefly highlight three exemplar, grassroots initiatives by librarians across British Columbia. These inspirational, creative, community based projects, programs, and services will demonstrate strong responses from the library community that participants in the session will be invited to respond to and build upon. During the second part of the session, participants will break into affinity groups to participate in interest mapping and resource sharing, positioning attendees to develop their own context appropriate responses to the TRC recommendations. The third and final part of the session will be short debriefing reports from each of the break out groups. Outcomes from the session will include first steps towards building a TRC Ignite Toolkit for information professionals across BC, and perhaps Canada. The Toolkit will include a replicable set of program, service, and collection ideas, skills, and frameworks to spark engagement with your communities on how they want to see your library embody the Calls to Action.
Speakers
Dr. Lisa Nathan, University of British Columbia, iSchool
Biography
Lisa is Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the First Nations Curriculum Concentration at the University of British Columbia’s iSchool. Through her research and teaching she addresses the question, How can we (re)imagine and (re)design contemporary information practices, ways of managing information, to better address long-term societal challenges (e.g., decolonization, social justice, environmental adaptation)?
Kim Lawson, University of British Columbia, Xwi7xwa Library
Biography
Kim is Heiltsuk with English/ Danish ancestry and serves as the Reference Librarian at Xwi7xwa Library. She is one of the authors of the “Protocols for Native American Archival Materials,” was the Archivist/ Librarian at The Union of BC Indian Chiefs Resource Centre, has an MLIS from UBC and is learning to speak Heiltsuk.
Barbara Kelly, BC Library Trustees' Association
Biography
Barbara has an interest in the Indigenization of organizations and recently completed an MBA with a focus on leadership and organizational development through an Aboriginal lens. She is committed to a reconciliation journey that has included providing testimony to the TRC and honouring her Kashechewan First Nation heritage. As a librarian, she has supported the development of Aboriginal led programs, collections, and spaces and she is hopeful for the eventual decolonization of taxonomy and stories.