DECOLONIZING THE CSW LIBRARY

ABOVE ART: Summer-Harmony Twenish is an Algonquin artist from Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg. They share their artwork on their Instagram account (@nibinikwe), and their portfolio can be found at summertwenish.ca

To understand how to decolonize, we first must understand what it means to be colonized. The United States is a colonized place. To be colonized is for one group (settlers) to move into an area and seize land, power, and political control over the Indigenous population, creating a new identity of its own. For a library (and other institutions) to be colonized, it means an operation from a specific worldview. In the case of the CSW Library, a predominantly white, cisgendered, heteronormative, Christian, patriarchal, able-bodied Western perspective.

To decolonize means for us to withdraw from this worldview through both our collection development and the ways in which we organize items to celebrate, uplift, and center other worldviews, perspectives, and ideas. Decolonization is not diversifying; a diverse library collection can still uphold colonial practices and ideas.

DECOLONIZING SPACE: CSW INTERSECTIONS PROJECT

Decolonial Worldviews marks the start of our intersections project. Explore a vision of the world that centers community and is reciprocal; society functions in a state of constant connectedness between land, people, animals, and objects and de-emphasizes the individual as superior or best. From there, we have a circular nature to the materials: The Land, The People, The Issues, and the Futures.

DECOLONIZING KNOWLEDGE (download)

DECOLONIZING KNOWLEDGE

RECLAIMING The American story has been profoundly shaped by Native Americans, yet the stories told about Native people are often false and almost always incomplete. Indigenous peoples are rarely narrators of these stories. Experience their stories to better understand this place and its truth.

RECIPROCATING Reciprocity–the practice of exchanging with others in cooperation, is the basis for relationships in many Indigenous communities. A collective responsibility to people, land, and non human relatives is critical, as well as actively seeking settler-Indigenous relationships of mutual benefit. Imagine a reciprocal relationship between the CSW community and Native peoples. What are its characteristics?

RESISTING Native people have been fighting colonization since it began. What do resistance and activism look like?

REIMAGINING There is a special power in the convergence of both words and images to tell a story. The stories highlighted here explore themes of cultural heritage and preservation, isolation and belonging, and settler colonial impacts on tradition. And for one, the importance of Indigenous people seeing themselves reflected as heroes with power.

RELATING Relationships sustain us, and when it comes to Indigenous peoples, relationships and responsibility go hand in hand. Like responsibility, relationships involve mutual respect, accountability, and reciprocity. For Native people, relationships to land, non-human relatives, and community are paramount.

REVISIONING The Dewey Decimal System is nearly 150 years old and its structure reflects the white, Christian, western values of its creator. The system–often described as racist and sexist–has been modified over time but systems will always reflect, in some way, their makers. While we consider truly decolonizing our shelves by classifying anew, we subvert the system we have in order to insure historically marginalized or erased groups are reflected as they are today–thriving, alive, and filled with abundance. Our community is represented in these stacks and we, as a library, choose to reflect the values we have for all humans here in the ways we hope to be reflected.

REFLECTING How has your experience and understanding of decolonizing practices in history and education shifted or changed? Reflect on and observe your experiences by describing a colonial structure you bear witness to. What are its characteristics? Dig deeper and explore how might you reorient yourself to every day activities with a new decolonial mindset? How would your approach look different?

FOSTERING A DECOLONIAL MIND (download)

COMMUNITY ACTION FOR

A DECOLONIAL MIND

1 IN GOOD RELATION WITH LAND AND OTHER LIVING BEINGS

Together We/I will say: “We/I belong to the land and am connected to all things. The land does not belong to me/us. All people have access to the land.”

2 IN GOOD RELATION WITH SELF

I will say: "I belong to myself and accountable to myself. I know when to lean in and when to step back. I always keep the community in mind first and foremost."

3 MANIFESTING AND ACKNOWLEDGING ENOUGH-NESS OF SELF AND OTHERS

Together We/I will say: "We all have history and abundance. We acknowledge those differences matter."

4 ENTERING INTO AND SUSTAINING ACCOUNTABLE AND RESPONSIBLE PARTNERSHIP WITH PEOPLE AND COMMUNITY

Together We/I will ask: “Who holds me/us accountable for my/our actions and who I am accountable to?”

5 REGULARLY CHALLENGE WESTERN VALUES, BELIEFS, AND POWER AS THE BEST OR IDEAL

Together We/I will ask: "Whose authority? Who decides that authority? What am I looking at? To whom am I seeking expertise?"

Ohen:ton Karihwatehkwen

Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address Greetings to the Natural World

FULL TEXT (download)

DECOLONIZING SHELVES

Classification systems for library collections, like any knowledge systems, are products of their times and cultural contexts. The two systems commonly encountered in the United States—the Dewey Decimal System and the Library of Congress System—were designed as universal, hierarchical outlines of the full scope of human knowledge. Yet their late-19th century origins inevitably limit them.

Let’s talk DDC , a system used more than any other to organize books in 200,000+ libraries throughout 130+ countries including the CSW Library, developed by Melvil Dewey in the late 1800s. His bigoted mindset shaped his classification system and we are left with an institutional framework rooted in white, Euro-centric, Protestant bias that should be (at the very least) reviewed regularly and subverted to meet the needs of our patrons today.

The way we organize and make information accessible shapes who we are as a society. We show what we value and how we think by how it's categorized. The DDS has been revised 23 times — with current editors especially committed to ethics in classification.

UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEMS WITH EARLY VERSIONS OF DDS Infographic by Jenna Wolf + Brooke Thompson '23

So, what do we do when we inherit a problematic system?

True decolonization means dismantling to build anew. The CSW Library is beginning to think about how we might be able to do this work and what it will entail. In the meantime, explore how we reclassify items below to inhabit more meaningful spaces on the shelves that are more intentional and mission-aligned.

EXAMINING MATERIAL IN THE CSW LIBRARY: THE RECLASSIFICATION PROCESS

Image of Red Earth White Lies by Jenna Wolf (click image for details)

A deep dive into a text in CSW Library Holdings

What does it signal to a prospective reader when a book that challenges scientific theories is shelved with folklore? This was the plight of Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact by Vine Deloria, Jr, which suggests using Native oral histories to corroborate (or refute) theories focused on prehistoric periods in North America. In this text, the author–a historian, theologian and activist of Standing Rock Sioux origin–references earth sciences, paleontology, ecology, anthropology and archaeology as he makes his case for the consideration of Native histories. How it was ever classified as folklore, we’ll never know, but we believe a classification in the sciences is far more appropriate.

Image of folklore texts by Jenna Wolf

A window into our Folklore Reclassification Project

The overwhelming majority of titles shelved at 398 were published prior to 2003 when the current language providing guidance for making the distinction between works presented as mythology and those presented as religion was established in Dewey Decimal Classification Edition 22. Considering the age, condition, and context of these materials provides us with an opportunity not only to reclassify them when appropriate, but to weed them out entirely if they no longer meet our collection development goals.

For a deeper look into purpose, scope, considerations, and selected texts, click here.

SUBVERTING DDS

Check out the shelf talkers at left, currently on display in the non fiction stacks, to explore how we manage complications with DDS and explore new ways to classify items based on our school's community, mission, and values.

"Indigenous groups are not anti-experimentation or technology, nor reject all new knowledge emerging from sciences, but often want to integrate that knowledge within their world views. Indigenous peoples do not expect scientists to adopt their stories of origin. Theirs are not generally proselytizing traditions. But they—we—want our political jurisdictions over our bodies and lands upheld and we want the power of our stories to shape our lives respected, and to not be deemed as untruths."

Kim Tallbear

Sisseton Wahpeton OyateTELL ME A STORY (GENE WATCH 2013)

DECOLONIAL COLLECTIONS DISPLAYS

See the books we have on display and which speak to the themes of Reclaiming, Reciprocating, Resisting, Reimagining, Relating, and Revisioning.

RESILIENCE THROUGH COMICS

Storytelling is one of the foundations of Indigeneity. It is used to communicate creation stories, ancestral wisdoms, and to share the joy and resilience both needed, and experienced, as colonized peoples in what is now called the United States. Not only do these stories hold cultural significance and act as a point of survival, they can be vehicles for sharing topics and ideas important to Indigenous peoples.

These Native comic and graphic novelists span the entire North American continent; for Native peoples, borders between the United States and Canada are imaginary and refer to this place Turtle Island. The stories highlighted here explore themes of cultural heritage and preservation, isolation and belonging, and settler colonial impacts on tradition. And for one, the importance of Indigenous people seeing themselves reflected as heroes with power. Check out the digital collection here.

Settler colonialism + INDIGENOUS RECLAMATION

This collection features fiction and non fiction from Indigenous writers about the impacts of living in a settler colonial state. These impacts include displacement, identity, citizenship, mental health and other traumas. Some are memoirs and some are short stories from multiple writers but all aim to express how colonization has profoundly shaped their experiences. Some offer bold statements on how to decolonize education or policies that shape Indian Country. Check out the digital collection here.

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