Paper Talk: Print Culture, Libraries and Aboriginal People in Canada before 1960

PAPER TALK: A HISTORY OF LIBRARIES, PRINT CULTURE, AND ABORIGINAL PEOPLES IN CANADA BEFORE 1960

ISBN 0-8108-5113-X
Scarecrow Press, 2005

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REVIEWS:

"Ground-breaking...an informative and useful volume. It is a landmark in its field!"
Thomas H. B. Symons, C.C., O.Ont., FRSC., LL.D., Founding President and Vanier Professor Emeritus, Trent University

"Paper Talk is an almost ideal example...of academic scrutiny supporting aboriginal values. It takes a seemingly peripheral subject -- the history of libraries in aboriginal-European relations -- and brings it to bear on the larger story with solid research, inexorable logic and often devastating conclusions." John Fraser, Dean of Massey College, University of Toronto, in the Globe and Mail, 18 June, 2005

"The history of the book in Canadian Aboriginal communities is becoming a subject of concentrated interest.... Paper Talk is an original and fine addition to this ongoing discussion.... a cohesive and richly detailed narrative that outlines general patterns among Aboriginal people combined with illustrations of specific examples in local contexts. Edwards balances solid primary research with careful integration of published works in the field. The book will be of interest to scholars of both Aboriginal peoples and the history of the book." Carolyn Podruchny, York University, in Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada 43.1 (Spring, 2005)

"Covers the largely untold story of the introduction of print to Canadian aboriginal peoples by missionaries as a 'civilizing' influence. Later, in the early twentieth century libraries were part of residential schools and the appendices include fascinating lists of approved books. Also documented are the initial efforts to establish public libraries in native communities, a void that remains today." Social Sciences Division, Vancouver Public Library Online

"This is a history of libraries and print culture and their combined impact on Aboriginal people in Canada. There's even an interesting piece on school libraries and their adequacies and deficiencies in the years before 1960. A scholarly and interesting read." The Nipawin Journal, 14 September, 2005

"Edwards analyses the contributions of a number of Aboriginals that were instrumental in articulating their people's concerns.... provides compelling background to contemporary literacy and print culture issues. Joanie Crandall, University of Saskatchewan, in SHARP News 14.4 (Autumn 2005)

"Edwards does what good historians do, and that is to speak to gaps in the story and offer deeper understanding.... Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above." G. Bruyere, Nicola Valley Institute of Technology, in CHOICE (November 2005)

"All the current stakeholders--Canadians, librarians, cultural historians, and, not least, politicians and Indigenous peoples engaged in a digital age in which both the promise of access and the expense of ownership have risen dramatically--ought to read this learned and passionate book." Susan Nash, Capital University, Bexley, Ohio, in Libraries and the Cultural Record 41.3 (2006)

"This provocative, well-written, well-edited, and thoroughly documented study deserves a place on the "must read" list of any academic librarian interested in the history of libraries, the social implications of Western notions of literacy, and/or the provision of library services to aboriginal peoples." Wade Kotter, Weber State University, in College and Research Libraries 68.1 (2007)

"This book is ... a wonderful read and a valuable addition to Canadian book and library history.... Edwards' works are informative histories that break new ground.... Paper Talk offers much new evidence and synthesizes existing accounts in an effective presentation about Aboriginal library history that has been, to date, sadly neglected.... contemporaries could gain from an examination of past precedents that were developed in the pre-1960 era." Lorne Bruce, University of Guelph, in Libraries Today Blog (October, 2007)

"Paper Talk is a valuable compact resource on the history of Aboriginal literacy in Canada.... The history of libraries and reading is an important and neglected aspect of cultural history, and Edwards possesses a good knack for penetrating government records to retrieve colourful characters and engaging human stories." Carole Gerson, Simon Fraser University, in English Studies in Canada 32.2-3 (2006)

"This is essentially THE book on aboriginal/indigenous libraries in Canada, historically speaking. Incredibly rich, full of intensely useful information, particularly for MLIS students, aboriginal researchers, or both." Erin (Librarian), Goodreads.com(July, 2009)

"Edwards’ book is a comprehensive account of Aboriginal literacy. The author challenges the belief that Aboriginal communities are solely pre-literate, oral cultures by providing pre- and post-contact examples of different forms of First Nations literacy ...." Canadian Aboriginal Communication Devices, UBC Wiki (September, 2009)

"If you've read Brendan Edwards' Paper Talk, you would clearly see how Indian and Northern Affairs has skirted and/or denied support for First Nations run libraries...." Reegan D. Breu, Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources, in Prairie Librarian Blog (April, 2009)

Contemporary Authors (Gage, 2009) says of Paper Talk:

Edwards' study ... "is much more than a history of print culture and libraries among aboriginal peoples in Canada, as its title suggests," wrote Wade Kotter in a review published on the College and Research Libraries Web site. "It is also a devastating critique of the narrow, ethnocentric notions of literacy that European colonists imposed on these aboriginal peoples and an account of how this imposition worked against the social, political, intellectual, and economic advancement of these peoples, despite the colonists' claims that this was being done for the betterment of these `primitive' peoples." Settlers saw the written words as a tool for manipulating and changing native cultures to further their own ends--a way in which they could dominate the ways in which Native peoples could present their ideas and concepts to one another. Lack of literacy and access to written culture was a weakness that Europeans exploited to their benefit. Edwards explains, however, that access to literacy cut both ways: while settlers saw literacy as part of a "civilizing" process that undermined native culture and brought Aboriginals into the world of "civilization," the Native Americans saw it as a tool to promote resistance and to preserve cultural traditions." In sum, he recounts compelling stories of cultural appropriation, resistance, cooperation,and invention," declared Susan Nash in Libraries and the Cultural Record. "His focus on instances of frustrated or creative collaboration between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal individuals, groups, and institutions addresses some gaps in Canadian history and outlines others only Indigenous peoples can fill."

For their part, the Native peoples recognized the power of the written word and strove to bend that power to serve their interests. Some of them, Edwards observed in his account, had already made some steps in that direction even before their initial contact with Europeans."Paper Talk," stated Carole Gerson in English Studies in Canada, "is a valuable compact resource on the history of Aboriginal literacy in Canada. It begins with an introduction to prevailing indigenous pre-contact sign systems such as wampum belts, petroglyphs and pictographs, wintercounts, and pictorial birchbark scrolls. Presenting Canada's First Peoples as inclined to forms of literacy before the arrival of Europeans, Edwards deals carefully with the delicate issue of the origins of the scripts known as M'ikmaq hieroglyphics (first described in the seventeenth century by Recollet missionary Father Christian LeClercq) and Ojibwe and Cree syllabics, whose attribution to the Methodist missionary, Reverend James Evans, is under some dispute."

The creation of alphabets and syllabics in native languages served the original purpose of the European missionaries and administrators: it opened Native cultures to the religion and ideas of Western civilization. At the same time, however, it helped those cultures maintain some control over their own destinies. By the late nineteenth century, First Nations groups had recognized the power that command of the written word gave them. The problem was, so did the settlers. To reassert control, European Canadians mandated that education and printing be in English, thus stripping much of the power that Native cultural organizations had won over the previous centuries. One of the key factors in this struggle was the existence of libraries. "Edwards views libraries as intellectual, religious, and social institutions. He examines how Europeans and Euro-Canadians used them as colonizing instruments among Aboriginal people," explained Carolyn Podruchny in Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada, "while at the same time Aboriginal people used libraries and printed books to counter colonization." "All the current stakeholders," concluded Nash, "ought to read this learned and passionate book."

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