The smallest First Nations Public Library (FNPL) I’ve heard of consists of two shelves. Yes, two shelves, not stacks. Michipicoten First Nation has a FNPL and fewer than 75 on-reserve residents. The largest FNPL is the Six Nations Public Library, where I am the CEO and director of library services; it houses a collection of close to 40,000 items. Yet, despite this collection’s size, two-thirds of that material sits in a shipping container in the parking lot because there is no physical room to store it. Regardless of size, there are many trials and tribulations which this group of libraries experiences. Still, these libraries provide a service—some might argue an essential service—to their communities.

A large majority of Canadians do not think about their libraries. Most cities, towns, and hamlets have one. Of the 133 First Nations reserves in Ontario, only 46 have libraries. In working for a FNPL, I’ve discovered that the majority of non-Indigenous people don’t even realize that First Nation Public Libraries exist. Yet, they do, and some have served their communities for over 60 years.

Two of the very first FNPLs to serve their communities were in geographically opposite regions of Ontario. One was in Northern Ontario, in Moose Factory, which is a Cree community near the coast of James Bay. This library got started in 1959. The other is Six Nations Public Library, located near Brantford, southwest of Toronto. According to librarians in the FNPL system who organized before me, these libraries started a trend and by 1985 there were five FNPLs in Ontario. By 1987, there were over 30, and in 1994 there were 44 First Nation Public Libraries. (At one point, between 1994 and 2002, there were over 50 FNPLs!)

Ontario is quite unique in that it is the only province in Canada to recognize the First Nation Public Libraries via legislation. FNPLs are included in the Public Libraries Act (PLA) of Ontario. This piece of legislation governs all public libraries in Ontario. Despite being recognized within the PLA, funding for FNPLs is paltry at best. This was discussed at a meeting of the First Nation public librarians of Ontario, where it came up that while funding for all public libraries, FNPL included, comes from the Ministry of Heritage, Sport, Tourism, and Culture Industries, funding for FNPLs from the government is quite different and substantially less than funding received by municipal libraries. For example, the First Nation Salary Supplement is $13,000 and the portion of the Public Library Operating Grant of less than $1,000 per year, based on the on-reserve population. Imagine: wages, purchasing new books, paying for hydro, telephone service, maybe the internet, possibly rent, plus a myriad of other bills, all on less than $14,000 annually!

Nonetheless, FNPLs are resilient and full of strength. This is exhibited in their First Nation Public Libraries’ vision statement: “Public libraries provide an essential service to First Nation communities. Our Chiefs and Councils lead our communities in recognizing and supporting our public libraries as vital contributors to growth and change. With current and culturally relevant collections and services, First Nation public libraries welcome all community members and support their needs for access to information, personal empowerment and self-affirmation. In partnership with other community programs, our public libraries contribute to our social and economic well-being by nurturing our spirits, preserving our traditions, cultures, and languages, and encouraging lifelong learning and literacy.”

The reality is that FNPLs exist in a balance between two worlds. On one hand, they must act and offer the materials and services which municipal public libraries offer. On the other, they are hubs for cultural and language revitalization, preserving and promoting our culture. That is to say, FNPLs have dual identities: they represent Canadian cultural norms in terms of their fiction, non-fiction, and other collections, but also act as a doorway to the cultures and traditions of their Nation.

It is through the support and advocacy of agencies like the Ontario Library Association (OLA), Southern Ontario Library Service (SOLS), Ontario Library Service – North (OLS-N), and the Federation of Public Libraries that an increased awareness of FNPLs is taking shape, and there have been some notable movements to further support FNPLs.

However, it has been the First Nations Public Librarians themselves, over the past 60 years, who have advocated for their community libraries, helped to increase literacy rates, and worked hard to increase financial support to maintain and establish new libraries. They have done this by creating a series of committees, under different names, all serving the same purpose: to increase awareness, financial, and other supports of FNPLs and First Nation librarians. At in-person meetings of the First Nations Public Librarians of Ontario and through former First Nations public librarians, I learned that in 1995, the First Nations Library Advisory Committee was formed to further the plight of FNPLs in Ontario. In 2004, First Nation librarians started to fundraise for a representative association: the First Nations Libraries Association (FNLA).

In 2010, a small group of librarians formed the National Aboriginal Public Library Organization (NAPLO) to seek out and secure funding and support for all First Nation libraries (FNPLs are divided geographically, with 29 operating in Northern Ontario, under OLS-N and 18 in Southern Ontario under SOLS. Hence the drive to support all FNPLs.)

First Nation public librarians continue to work to have all people recognize the value of Indigenous ways of knowing and Indigenous knowledge. This mandate was established and grew out of a series of meetings in both Canada and the U.S. The ones I am most familiar with are the National Reading Campaign’s Aboriginal Roundtables which ran annually from 2013 to 2015. At the 2015 Halifax roundtable, the third annual roundtable, the Draft Business Plan for a National Aboriginal Library Association (NALA) was established.

With the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the 94 Calls to Action, First Nation Public Libraries have established partnerships with other cultural memory institutions and are in the process of forming the National Indigenous Knowledge and Language Alliance (NIKLA). Though this organization is in its infancy, it has been a long time in the making. I am excited to be a part of this movement, and to continue the work of all the remarkable FNPL librarians that have come before me. I’m equally excited to help create something that will help retain the voices and knowledge of the past for those who come after me.

For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, vibrant cities, safe spaces, peaceful collaboration, and more—we encouraged our writers to dream big, to hope, and to courageously share their ideas and wish lists for our collective better future. Here’s to another 50 years!

Imagine going to your local library in search of Canadian books. You wander through the stacks but are surprised to find most shelves barren with the exception of books that are more than 100 years old. This sounds more like an abandoned library than one serving its patrons, yet it’s roughly what Canada’s digitization efforts have looked like. While other countries work to digitize virtually all of their books and notable articles, Canada has barely scratched the surface.

Financial and legal constraints are typically identified as two of the biggest barriers to ensuring universal digital access to Canadian heritage. Major digitization initiatives are certainly costly, but experience elsewhere shows that a government-led initiative that brings together public and private resources is possible with the right champion.

Digitization initiatives in other countries show that the legal challenges are frequently overstated. American courts have ruled that massive digitization programs such as Google’s qualify as fair use. Canadian law features fair dealing, but a similar approach could be adopted. The Supreme Court of Canada’s interpretation of the law lends itself to a digitization program in which all Canadian works are converted into digital format for research, study, and education.

All public domain works—which could reasonably be estimated to include anything published before 1940—could be made immediately accessible in full text. Moreover, the government could launch a crowdsourcing initiative where Canadians identify additional public domain works of authors who died more than 50 years ago. This would include many books published in the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s. For the remaining works, fair dealing would permit a portion of the work be made available without the need for further permission. For full text, authors could be given the opportunity to specify how, if at all, their works should be accessible.

With Canada set to celebrate its 150th birthday, now is the ideal time to give ourselves a birthday gift that will keep giving for years to come. A national digitization strategy is long overdue and starts with a government committed to a bold vision of making Canada’s heritage digitally accessible to all by creating a national digital library with everything.

Gary Freeman, AKA Joseph Pannell, pictured circa 1976.

He was branded Canada’s very own Black Panther. In 2004, Gary Freeman, born Joseph Pannell, was arrested by Toronto police at gunpoint outside of his workplace, the Toronto Reference Library. It turned out that this friendly library assistant, father, and husband was harbouring a secret past. In Chicago in 1969, he had shot a cop three times, leaving him with a partially paralyzed arm. He then skipped bail and fled to Canada.

Juicy story. But there’s no evidence Freeman was a Black Panther Party (BPP) member. He denies it. Former party members haven’t heard of him. And U.S. authorities didn’t even attempt to link him to the group in their criminal proceedings against him. The case itself was also rife with irregularities. The injured officer’s account of the incident was inconsistent, which mainstream media never reported on, and he was also the case’s investigating officer—a major conflict of interest.

Although Freeman knew a trial would reveal the holes in the evidence and the reality of police brutality against blacks at the time, he accepted a plea bargain in 2008. At that point, he’d spent years in pre-extradition custody and he just wanted it to be over. Freeman served 30 days in the U.S. and paid a fine of $250,000, which went to a charity chosen by the injured officer. But despite this, Freeman is unable to resume his life in Toronto with his family.

Canadian authorities won’t let him back in, claiming he is linked to a “terrorist organization,” the Black Panthers. But the only evidence the government has provided to substantiate its claim is news stories; furthermore, BPP is not even designated a terrorist organization in Canada, and other members, including former Panther Angela Davis, cross the border without incident.

Last fall, Freeman was even denied permission to visit his dying father-in-law, with whom he was extremely close, and was later prevented from attending his funeral.

“It’s so cruel, we really don’t understand,” says Freeman’s wife, Natercia Coelho, who visits her husband at his parents’ house in Washington, D.C. as often as she can. Their four children also visit when able, but the distance weighs on the family. They continue to fight for Freeman’s return by circulating petitions and sending letters asking authorities to allow him in on humanitarian grounds.

Here’s a nauseating little snippet of Kavanagh’s list of “Do’s and Don’ts”, as reported by the Tyee:

“Do not have Pepsi or Dairy Queen sponsor your event,” read guidelines sent to VPL branch heads and supervisory staff last fall. “Coke and McDonald’s are the Olympic sponsors. If you are planning a kids’ event and approaching sponsors, approach McDonald’s and not another well-known fast-food outlet.”

Among other things, the memo reportedly goes on to say that if  librarians have a guest speaker in from, say, Telus instead of Olympic sponsor Bell, they should make sure they’re not wearing a Telus jacket or other logo-wear while they’re speaking. And if there is any audio-visual equipment being used, make sure it’s from Worldwide Olympic Partner Panasonic. But Jean — what if it’s a Sony brand CD player? The horror! Kavanagh is a step ahead of you with this helpful tip: “I would get some tape and put it over the ‘Sony,'” Kavanagh [told the Tyee]. “Just a little piece of tape.”

The president of CUPE 391, which represents Vancouver’s librarians, told the Globe and Mail that these rules are non-starters:

Alex Youngberg, president of the library union, says the memo is contrary to the spirit of a public library. “There’s something in my library to offend everybody,” she said. “And that’s our job. Our job as library staff is to not ever censor any information.”

C’mon Alex, why be such a Debbie Downer? Catch the Olympic Spirit! Catch it! NO REALLY — CATCH IT. CATCH THE SPIRIT.

If the Association of Book Publishers of B.C. gets its way, the province’s libraries will be making a major acquisition this summer without gaining any weight. The association’s Best of B.C. Books Online project plans to purchase electronic rights to a collection of some 1,000 non-fiction titles from British Columbia publishers, which will soon be made available for free in schools and public libraries across the province.

1,000 B.C. books in your pocket. Illustration by Dave Donald

As one of the first such projects in Canada, Best of B.C. Books Online has the daunting task of navigating the myriad legal and mercantile ambiguities of e-book distribution and sharing. “This is a pilot project in a bigger sense, that we’re setting some kind of standards with this project in Canada,” says Margaret Reynolds, executive director of the Association of Book Publishers of B.C. There are many details still to be negotiated between the libraries and publishers, such as the cost of electronic rights, whether they will be bought with a one-time purchase or an annual fee, and how much text readers can copy or print from these files.

Further complicating the project is the print publishing establishment’s wariness of e-books. Their concerns hinge on the risk of piracy, those of an unfamiliar marketplace, and the challenges of incorporating new technologies into their practices. E-books have yet to catch on with the public, but the success of the Amazon Kindle ebook reader in the U.S., and internet giant Google’s prospective settlement with the Writers’ Union of Canada over digitization rights to authors’ works shows that changes are afoot. Publishers are looking to futureproof their business, even if a full strategy isn’t yet clear.

Paul Whitney, the city librarian at the Vancouver Public Library, thinks the book industry is now where the music industry was 10 years ago, when fear of piracy made record companies hesitant to adopt new distribution methods. “Now the music industry understands that the notion of restricting content to one platform means it’s not going to succeed in the marketplace.”

At a time of crisis in the publishing industry, the Best of B.C. Books Online, which will go live in the summer of 2009, wants to ensure that Canadian content doesn’t get lost in the scramble to create a new model for the industry. “We want this to be a success story,” says Whitney, “with more Canadian content being available, more revenue for Canadian publishers, and more people accessing these Canadian books.”