Relationship Building in Canada
Many Canadian libraries exemplify work toward convivencia. Design Lead Kelli Morning Bull from Calgary explains how they build relationships with Indigenous Elders.
During the last couple of years I have been able to work with the local governments and/or public libraries in Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, Quebec, and Toronto. The more I engage with Canadian cities, the more the country fascinates me with its contradictions and frictions. As someone interested in convivencia, the capability for coexistence, Canada is a fruitful site of exploration. Not because Canada is perfect but because they are doing the work.
Canada comes across to a novice like myself as a country of contradictions and different realities. Despite being the second-largest country in the world, approximately 90 percent of its population lives within 100 miles from the US border. Canada’s active immigration policy has made its big cities incredibly multicultural. 44 percent of Canada’s population are first or second generation immigrants. In its biggest city, Toronto, 52 percent of the population belong to a visible minority. The Canadian notion of diversity and multiculturalism is closer to Western European ideals than the melting pot thinking in the US.
I started writing this newsletter on Canada in Montréal where I gave a keynote on convivencia at the annual rendez-vous of the Quebec Library Association. This was my first visit to Montréal. Talking about coexistence, Quebec is considered a nation within a nation. Its legislature has introduced heavy legal protections for French language and culture. Quebec libraries are mandated to buy their books from local bookstores to support local businesses, immigrants need to learn French in six months, public services have a mandate to serve everyone always first in French and most signs in public spaces can only be in French. Nearly 40 percent of quebequis support secession from Canada. As one of the library leaders said:”We do see ourselves quite different from the rest of Canada.”
Next to rural-urban, French-English, and immigration-driven ethnic/cultural superdiversity, Canada has 630 First Nations [Indigenous] communities. All these different Canadian identities combined create friction, opportunities and tensions in how to deal with the past, how to live together now and what does the future of Canada look like.
Canada’s Path Towards Truth and Reconciliation
Canada has a dark history with its Indigenous peoples. For 150 years starting in the 1880s, an estimated 150,000 Indigenous children were separated from their families and siblings, put into residential schools and exposed to cruelty and abuse with the goal of separating from their Indigenous language, culture, and traditions. Thousands of children died, many experienced lifelong trauma and struggled with addiction as a result of the violence. In addition, Indigenous women are overrepresented in women missing in Canada.
Canada has taken the difficult but needed yet painful step towards dealing with its past. Between 2005 and 2017 Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission heard over 6,750 witnesses. In this video, Chief Robert Joseph describes the inhumane treatment, its effect and the importance of the work on Truth and Reconciliation.
The Commission suggested 94 recommendations including a formal apology on behalf of the Government and people of Canada by the Prime Minister, increased funding for truth and reconciliation work, a national day of remembrance and legal requirements to public institutions, like public libraries, to provide information and support on history and present of First Nations in Canada. This news coverage from the release of the report captures the emotions and importance of this work.
Libraries in Truth and Reconciliation
From the libraries I have worked with, Calgary, Edmonton, and Toronto have dedicated teams, spaces, resources, internal policies and programming on Truth and Reconciliation. In all these three libraries, the bigger meetings and public convenings I attended have started with a land acknowledgement. Land acknowledgements include the recognition of the original custodians of the land and a personal reflection on how this connects to the purpose of this particular gathering. Here is a Land Acknowledgement from Calgary Public Library.
Indigenous Placemaking in Calgary
During the Quebec library conference, Service Design Lead Kelli Morning Bull from Calgary Public Library gave a powerful presentation on their work on Indigenous placemaking as part of their work to make libraries more welcoming and representative to Indigenous people. Indigenous placemaking results in artistic installations in library spaces supported by educational programming. Currently there are installations in eight of Calgary Public Library’s 21 branches. Having seen some of the results of this work and hearing Kelli’s presentation, I feel many institutions could learn from this work.
Morning Bull described the placemaking process in phases:
Phase 1: Community Engagement
Consulting the Stoney Nakoda, Siksika, Tsuut'ina, and Métis Nations
Building relationships with Elders
Establishing a review committee for the Open Call submissions
Phase 2: Extending A Broader Invitation
Engaging other communities further from Calgary and the general public in the development.
Phase 3: Diversity and Equity
Investing in and ensuring the voices of women and LGBTQI2+ members of the indigenous communities in the installations.
Phase 4: Design and Installation
This video presents some of these projects and the artists behind them.
As Kelli pointed out, the impact of this work goes far beyond the results at the library. Meeting the artists where they are and supporting them throughout the process has allowed them to connect to other public institutions and have more work commissioned from them. It has also made the library spaces more welcoming to Indigenous residents.
Placemaking is only one, although very visible, part of Calgary Public Library’s indigenous work. Next to the artistic installations, their Indigenous work includes investments in Indigenous spaces, language and cultural programming, collections development, and most importantly, professional development for the library staff.
The library is committed to teaching non-Indigenous visitors about the history of Indigenous people in Canada but also to having spaces and programming that are just for Indigenous people. As Kelli explained it:”People just want to feel like they don't have to keep explaining themselves.” As a sign of the institution’s commitment, a ten-hour course on truth and reconciliation is now mandatory for all the library’s staff. The course is followed by a three-hour conversation with colleagues and and Elder.
Kelli Morning Bull: “We have to build meaningful relationships, not just seek transaction. “
All of this work relies on the library’s relationship building with the Elders of the First Nations communities. I talked to Kelli about the lessons from this work.
For us outside Canada, could you explain who the Elders are and what is their role in their communities?
The role of Elders is described well in the Elders Story Project toolkit written by a committee including our library, United Way, and Elders Patrick Diagneault & Calvin Racette:
"Elders and Knowledge Keepers have earned rights and responsibilities and are recognized as Elders or Knowledge Keepers by their community. Their knowledge is lived, and that knowledge is shared or transferred with permission to pass on to others. Elders are the encyclopedias and walking libraries of Indigenous nations, in all their diversity. Elders often provide guidance, may oversee ceremonies, and/or share teachings of their language, beliefs, customs, values and traditions."
What do the Elders want from the library?
It is around representation and storytelling. Getting the stories out, making sure that they're accurate, that they are told from an indigenous perspective, and that there's spaces for these stories to be shared. Truth and Reconciliation is about having access to Indian residential school history but also what are the next steps. The Elders talked a lot about facts and truth telling, about the accuracy in that representation.
How do you approach this relationship building?
Working with different indigenous communities can pose challenges. There's a lot of politics within and between the nations and then you bring the Western lens on top of that.
So how I do this is what we in Blackfoot call kimmapiiyipitssini. It means compassion. There's a lot of mistrust in Indigenous communities toward libraries. It's about rebuilding that relationship to ensure that they feel that they belong in these spaces, and that they are truly represented from an indigenous perspective.
In your presentation you talked about relationship building and that you yourself are Blackfoot. How do you build these relationships as an employee of a public institution?
We have to build meaningful relationships, not just seek transaction. It's really important to bring these communities together, give them a space to share but also to voice their concerns and hear what they would like to see for future generations. It is following the lead of the Indigenous people.
I am Indigenous myself but I only speak for myself. Sometimes I have to speak for my own community but I don't represent all Indigenous people. So it is important that there is a collective and that they are respected. Because if they are not coming to these spaces we are creating, we are not doing what we should be doing.
This work goes beyond a professional role. I take Elders for coffee, I bring them snacks, I take them to the movies. It's all about relationality. In our communities this is just how we are, how we create and work with each other.
When I first started working at the library, I did not know some of the Elders very well. Through conversation I learned that some of them were my relatives from my dad's side or my mom's side, so I nurtured that. When they would come to the library, I would sit down with them. Sometimes you're there for 20 minutes, sometimes you’re sitting for three hours if you want to build that relationship, Sometimes I have to say that I have to go to a meeting but I will come back.
There’s one of the Elders who loves pop culture. After years of doing this, I feel comfortable enough to just say:”Hey, would you like to go to a movie this weekend?” Another one of the Elders really loves timbits so I bring him timbits every time I visit him. It's little things like that.
What is important too is that I pass this information down to our CEO Sarah Meilleur and make sure she knows when the Elders are in. She checks in and brings them little candies or coffee or something like that as she is also trying to build that relationship. It's not transactional. It is: “Hello, how are you doing? Can I get you anything while you are here?” Little conversation goes a long way.
Do you support the Elders financially?
That is one of our challenges: paying our Elders in a traditional way. The Western way does not align with Indigenous knowledge practices. A lot of Western organizations pay in 30 days. But when we work with Elders, we should be paying them the same day. And that doesn't always happen. Not paying on time is really detrimental to the relationship that you have with these Elders as knowledge keepers. We've had people who never came back to the library because how we operate on a financial level. But we are working really hard on this. Now many of the Elders are comfortable with being paid in seven days. But we need to understand that this is their livelihood.
What have you learned when doing this work?
My background is not in libraries. I am a creative person coming into this with a film background. Bringing and building resources and services comes really naturally to me and then combining that traditional knowledge aspect. Knowing the protocols and practices of those communities has been beneficial for me when developing these programs. It's important that you sort of understand the Western and the Indigenous knowledge systems and how they can be combined. But finding that parallel can be hard to find.
We have also learned that often you don’t know if something is going to work before you actually do the work. You understand slowly how this spreads across the organization. When we did the land acknowledgement project, it started off with just a land acknowledgement. But then we realized that we had to build resources for staff to understand it, we had to provide pronunciation guides for them, we had to make resources for the public and we had to work with the Elders through all of this. It was supposed to be a couple of months and it took two years as we developed digital assets, materials for children and adults and so forth. It really was this giant monster that just kept growing.
But what we are learning is that it is more critical to do it right than to do it in time.
Lessons on Relationship Building
When working with groups that your institution or the local government as a whole has done injustice to or regularly overpromised and underdelivered, no representative of that institution is free from that legacy. Friction is therefore inevitable. The work of libraries, like Calgary, demonstrates how trust is built through a combination of showing up, acts of appreciation and concrete, visible action for rights, resources, and representation. When your success as a public organization in fulfilling your legal duties depends on these relationships, you have to meet people and communities where they are. Some takeaways from Kelli’s experience are:
Meet people where they are, especially in the beginning of the relationship. Go to them rather ask them to come to you.
Create spaces and resources for them in collaboration with them.
Recognize and appreciate the time given to you by the formal or informal leaders of these groups.
Demonstrate that you have heard what is being shared with you, especially when it is critical toward you or your institution and even if you don’t have an answer or solution.
Show up as a human being while understanding your institutional legacy, power, and opportunity.
Hire people who have credibility and experience in the communities you are trying to reach even.
Build practices, like larger gatherings and councils, that reduce nepotism.
Maintain a lens of diversity and equity into the work and ensure that you are amplifying also the voices of those underrepresented in your gatherings or marginalized in their own communities.
That’s (nearly) it for today. Take care. Next edition is on Los Angeles.
Tommi
P.S. Canada Continued: Convivencia with Edmonton
Over the next six months I have an opportunity to dive deeper into Canadian coexistence, including Indigenous work, as Designer Ruben Ocampo and I will start a six-month design and development project with Edmonton Public Library, one of the most innovative library systems in North America. Together with their staff, we will be exploring the concept of convivencia and how it can guide their customer experience, physical spaces, and staff development. I will be sharing more about this journey in the following newsletters but just watch this video with CEO Pilar Martinez and you’ll understand how amazing it is to work with them:
P.P.S. Canada Continued: Convivencia with Toronto
If you are interested in learning more about my work on convivencia and libraries, Toronto’s City Librarian Vickery Bowles and I will be doing a dialogue on the subject on 27 May at 2 PM EST. You can register to the hybrid event hosted by Toronto Public Library here.
P.P.S. Good News: Recognition of Indigenous Culture in Europe
Talking about representation and recognition: great news last week that Siida, the Sámi museum from Inari, Finland, highlighting the traditions and culture of the only Indigenous peoples in the European Union, was just selected as the European Museum of the Year.
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Enlightening work, Tommi!