Aboriginal and Visible Minority Librarians: Oral Histories from Canada

Abstract

Lee, Deborah and Mahalakshmi Kumaran. Aboriginal and Visible Minority Librarians: Oral Histories from Canada. Toronto and New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. Print. 231 pp. 65.00 USD. ISBN: 978-1-4422-3681-3 (pbk.); 978-1-4422-3682-0 (ebook).Librarianship is such a white profession.This observation (made years ago by one of editor Deborah Lee's MLIS professors), underscores the need for-and importance of-Aboriginal and Visible Minority Librarians: Oral Histories from Canada. For a profession that ostensibly places a public premium on diversity, librarianship is still, overwhelmingly, a haven white privilege, particularly in Canada.This contradiction is especially acute as it pertains to Canada's troublingly few Indigenous librarians and was a major focus of the September 2014 meeting of the Council of Prairie and Pacific University Libraries at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta. In attendance were most of the Indigenous librarian/authors featured in editors Lee and Kumaran's new book, including Camille Callison (Tahltan, University of Manitoba), Jessie Loyer (Cree-Metis, Mount Royal University), Kim Lawson (Heiltsuk-Kitasoo, University of British Columbia), and Mary Weasel Fat (Blood, Red Crow Community College), as well as Lee herself (Cree-Mohawk-Metis, Indigenous Studies Librarian, University of Saskatchewan).Most of the participants at that event-myself included-were non-Indigenous Canadians. Few First Nation children, we were told, have easy access to libraries or librarians, or think of librarianship as a career, and as a consequence retain (as one speaker put it) an unconscious suspicion of libraries, seeing them as just another form of Western infrastructure intended for the public good but one that nevertheless overlooks Indigenous world views.Other visible minority groups, too, are underrepresented in the profession: a 2005 report on the state of human resources in Canadian libraries found that their presence as professionals may be half of their actual demographic profile in Canadian society (8Rs Research Team 44-45).For all these inequities, however, too little attention has been paid in the Canadian library literature to this apparent lack of diversity in the profession. Not so in the United States: many decades now, the American library literature has devoted considerable attention to visible minority professionals, mostly African-American and Hispanic librarians. By contrast, the Canadian literature is rather meagre, mostly of recent vintage, and largely concerned with improving diversity in general rather than on exploring the experiences of professionals from identifiable racial and ethnic groups. Even the Canadian Library Association's 2008 (rather brief) Statement on Diversity and Inclusion refers only to patrons but makes no reference to the profession itself.With this new edited collection, Kumaran (originally from India) and Lee have done a tremendous service to the profession in filling this gap. They present a mix of personal narrative, scholarship, and career advice that will both empower and encourage aspiring Aboriginal and visible minority librarians and enlighten Euro-Canadian professionals as to the struggles they face. In fact, the diverse pathways to satisfying careers offered here would be of value to any library school student or new professional, regardless of racial or ethnic background.Beyond their previous publications in the professional literature, Lee and Kumaran (also from the University of Saskatchewan) have both made other noteworthy contributions: Lee as project leader since 2007 on the University's invaluable Indigenous Studies Portal (iPortal) and Our Legacy archive, and Kumaran on founding the Visible Minority Librarians of Canada (ViMLOC) Network through the Canadian Library Association.On offer in their new book is a selection of eighteen essays, nine from Aboriginal librarians and nine from librarians representing various immigrant groups from the Indian subcontinent, China, the Philippines, and Jamaica. …

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