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PAPERS

White Supremacy and Libraries
Thoughts Around the Campfire
Matt Ostercamp, North Park University

ABSTR AC T: Shortly after the murder of George Floyd in May of 
2020, I came across the 1872 painting American Progress. In this 
painting, westward expansion is being led by a large floating white 
woman with a schoolbook in one arm and telegraph wires in the 
other. The Indigenous inhabitants of the West cower before this 
apparition. It is indeed a haunting image. In this paper, I explore the 
legacy of Enlightenment constructs of civilized/savage in the opera-
tions of academic libraries. I then introduce Indigenous authors 
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Shawn Wilson who offer some 
alternatives to Western knowledge practices. Finally, I conclude 
by reflecting on what theological librarians can contribute to our 
professional conversation on White supremacy. 

The murder of George Floyd in May 2020 occasioned conversations 
around the world on racism and race-based oppression. In the Bran-
del Library at North Park University, we asked each other about 
the impact of racism on library practice. Throughout that summer, 
different staff members led conversations on this topic through the 
lens of their particular expertise in archives, instruction, and collec-
tions. The idea for this paper was birthed in those conversations, 
and I’m excited to invite you to join us in reflecting on the possible 
connections between libraries and White supremacy.

I also want to acknowledge my debt to North Park psychology 
student and library office manager Charis Ivanoff. Cher, who is 
Native Alaskan, graciously answered my many questions to her 
about her experiences with Indigenous culture and joined me in 
reading the works of Indigenous scholars referenced below. I came 
into this work with very little previous experience with the culture 
and practices of the Indigenous peoples of North America, and Cher’s 
guidance was very valuable.



Papers  37

CAMPFIRES

Have you ever sat around a campfire after a long summer day? Have 
you heard the wood crackle? Felt the sting of the smoke in your eyes? 
Watched the sparks ascend towards the stars above? As indicated by 
the subtitle, I invite you to conjure those late-night campfires as the 
imagined setting for this paper. I invoke the campfire first because it 
is a place of reflection on our connections to the thousands of years 
of human history that have come before us. When we look into the 
coals or turn our gaze to the stars, we are sharing experiences with 
our distant ancestors. Here I experience both the humbling thought 
that our chapter is part of a much larger story and also awe that the 
journey has led to this current moment and a responsibility to those 
who came before. 

But a campfire is more than this. A campfire is a place for guitars, 
singing, and laughing at funny stories. It is a place we can connect 
with old friends and discover new friends. There is an easy intimacy 
around the campfire where we can lose ourselves in community. 
Can you think of a goofy campfire song you’ve shared with friends? 
I invite you to remember the friendly warmth of the fire as you read. 

Mostly though, I invoke the campfire because it provides a setting 
where we commonly lower our defenses and are allowed to ques-
tion cherished assumptions. The campfire is liminal space that 
invites wonder and curious speculation about ideas that linger on 
the periphery of consciousness. It is the principal place where we 
tell ghost stories and explore what haunts us. I’m inviting you to join 
me in front of the flickering flames, to momentarily suspend your 
usual assumptions. I’m inviting you to a ghost story. 

CIVILIZATION AND SAVAGES

“Because Western academic libraries in particular emerged from 
Enlightenment-derived epistemology and are premised on 
Euro- and Christian-centric knowledge structures, libraries have 
unwittingly participated in and supported this legacy of imperialism 
historically and contemporarily.”   (Gohr 2017, 43)

Our exploration of racism and libraries in the summer of 2020 led 
me to the above quote in Michelle Gohr’s article on decoloniza-
tion and libraries.  As I read this quote, I could feel my body tense, 
and I wanted to argue with the premise and dismiss the conclusion. 
Libraries are ancient, I thought. Libraries are good, I said. Maybe 



38  AT L A 202 1 PROCEEDINGS

that is your reaction as well. But I couldn’t let it go. As I kept thinking 
about it, I had to admit that it is likely that modern librarianship is 
connected to modern epistemology. An epistemology that came into 
its own in the wake of the “Age of Discovery” and flourished during 
the era of the Atlantic slave trade and European colonization. 

At its best, the Enlightenment was bold, confident, and willing 
to challenge old assumptions. But when I read seventeenth- and 
eighteenth-century European intellectuals, I find them often more 
than a little smug, a little too self-important and haughty. They were 
convinced that their intellectual and cultural project was superior to 
the work of their predecessors, and one often finds claims of math 
over myth, science over superstition, reason over passion. In eigh-
teenth-century Britain, “polite society” was championed over the rank 

“enthusiasm” of religious and cultural others such as the Catholic 
Jacobin Highland clans. Ultimately the rational, scientific, and polite 
cultural project claimed the title of civilization and branded those 
it found superstitious and engaging in crude passions as the savage.  

Although we no longer speak of bringing civilization to the 
“savages” of the world, as one once did, it is interesting to me how 
the civilized/savage dichotomy continues to live on in racial tropes 
such as the angry black woman. But does it also live on in modern 
libraries? Could one make a case that libraries are monuments of 
scientific modernism?

When Gohr writes that libraries “emerged from Enlightenment-
derived epistemology,” I think of Newton’s universal laws, Bacon and 
Locke’s empiricism, and the rationalism of Descartes and Spinoza, 
and I find resonance with libraries’ attempts to maintain neutral-
ity, and aspirations to collect and catalog all points of view on all 
subjects.  There seems to be something fundamentally modern and 
secular about libraries’ refusal to judge texts based on conformity 
to creeds and ideology. Finally, common behavioral norms of silent, 
solitary text-based study traditionally associated with libraries bear 
a resemblance at least to the celebrated norms of polite society in 
contrast to the uncouth mores of the enthusiasts. 

Now I’m not here claiming that I’ve made the case that libraries 
are connected to Enlightenment thought, let alone imperialism and 
colonialism. But haunted by the thought that there may be a connec-
tion, this reflection on the historic dichotomy between civilized and 
savage did little to assuage my fear, and since this is a ghost story, it 
is time to meet the ghost. 



Papers  39

THE GHOST

In 1872 John Gast painted an image entitled American Progress. In 
this painting the spirit of America is represented as an angelic blond 
woman in flowing garments with a star diadem on her head. Hover-
ing over the Midwestern prairie, she gazes confidently westward. 
Behind her the sun rises on a bustling harbor with a large suspen-
sion bridge. Trains and coaches, farmers and prospectors follow the 
apparition, while in the west storm clouds gather, the bison flee, and 
the native people cower looking up at this floating giantess. 

Thinking about libraries and imperialism, I decided to revisit 
this painting since it is often thought of as capturing the American 
idea of Manifest Destiny and, I believe, the idea of White supremacy. 
As I looked more closely at the foregrounded spirit, I noted that she 
carries a school book in her right hand and a telegraph wire in her 
left hand. I thought it was interesting that even in 1872 we see this 
pairing of printed text and networked information technology. That 
was the moment I first saw it. You probably see it to. This ghost of 
imperialism, of Manifest Destiny is a … librarian.



40  AT L A 202 1 PROCEEDINGS

CAMPFIRE #1

Of course, I don’t know if Gast thought of her as a librarian, but she 
is doing library things, and I’m left to ask why was “American Prog-
ress” painted with a textbook and telegraph wire? Why these symbols 
and this image? What does this phantasm have to say to us about the 
work we do? Can we create a campfire-like space to lower our shared 
commitments to librarianship and consider these haunting questions? 

I think it is also both fair and important to ask what this painting 
and story may leave out.  Are there aspects of our profession that 
haven’t been represented? 

THE INDIGENOUS CONTRAST

I want to continue to interrogate this painting but shift our atten-
tion from the foregrounded White people to the figures in the back-
ground. In the distance, Gast painted a cluster of tepees and a group 
of stick figures with arms and legs akimbo as if in the middle of an 
ecstatic dance. These figures, and the dance, myth, and tribal customs 
they suggest were likely meant to be contrasted with the modern 
knowledge that American progress is bringing.  

I asked myself, how do the Indigenous inhabitants of the Americas 
think about knowledge? How do they seek to preserve and transmit 
knowledge? As I wrestled with how White supremacy is expressed 
in librarianship, I conjectured that perhaps exploring Indigenous 
perspectives on the fundamental tasks that we engage in would 
help me contextualize the practices of librarianship. Rather than the 
triumphalism that Gast captures, what if the cultures of Europe and 
the Americas gathered around a campfire to learn from each other?

I’ve only begun reading some Indigenous scholars. In the para-
graphs below, I want to highlight three key concepts that have stood 
out to me from what I’m reading. My purpose here is to whet your 
appetite for thinking about our work from the perspective of differ-
ent cultures and to invite you to join in this exploration. I’m using 
the word “Indigenous” to stand in for the great variety of people 
and cultures that trace their history on this land to times before 
the Europeans arrived in the fifteenth century. I hope what I offer 
below can be fruitful for our reflections on the meaning and impact 
of White supremacy without overstating any particular claim as the 
Indigenous perspective. 



Papers  41

GROUNDED NORMATIVITY

Leanne Betasamoske Simpson is a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar 
from the northern shores of Lake Ontario. Her book As We Have 
Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance (Univ. 
of Manitoba Press, 2017) argues Indigenous identity is formed by 
their close observation and intimate interaction with a specific place. 
She uses the phrase “grounded normativity” to capture the way the 
local land shapes and teaches the Nishnaabeg as they attend to it 
and its communities (Simpson 2017, 24). The communities in view 
here are both the biological communities of plants, animals, fish, 
and people, as well as communities of spirits that are understood to 
inhabit that place. She writes about land as pedagogy and explains 
how her people learn how to be in the world through experiencing 
the rhythms of the physical place where they live. 

This emphasis on close observation and participation in the natu-
ral world as the source of knowledge stands out to me as a contrast 
with the rationalism epitomized by thinkers like René Descartes 
who tried to construct an epistemology that transcended compet-
ing claims to truth by suspending belief in the physical world. I also 
think of how Simpson’s focus on understanding the relationships 
present in a particular location contrast with the project of thinkers 
like Isaac Newton who sought to discover universal laws that would 
explain phenomena independent of their local context. 

RESEARCH AS RECIPROCAL RELATIONSHIPS

I really enjoyed reading Shawn Wilson’s book Research Is Ceremony 
(Fernwood Publishing, 2008). Dr. Wilson is Opaskwayak Cree from 
northern Manitoba, and his book is an example and explanation of 
an Indigenous research model based on respect, reciprocity, and 
relationality (Wilson 2008, 77). What stood out to me as I read about 
Wilson’s “3Rs” was that the researcher in this paradigm is always 
a community member and not a neutral observer. Wilson argues 
that it is important for the Indigenous researcher to foreground the 
context of knowing and to situate themselves in spiritual, ecological, 
and tribal communities. Thus, his academic work on research meth-
odology contains an extended discussion of his parents’ life, letters 
to his children, and personal reminiscences of key sources. 



42  AT L A 202 1 PROCEEDINGS

In addition to the clear contrast with Western traditions of neutral-
ity, I was struck by how little I know about many of the authors that 
I read and how impersonal the connection between the text and 
the academic reader often is. The book/reader relationship is often 
only an intellectual relationship where the author’s human reality 
of being a daughter/sister/mother is obscured at best. The ideas are 
foregrounded, and the context of those ideas often hidden. 

 PERFORMATIVE KNOWLEDGE

The final takeaway thus from my time reflecting on Indigenous 
knowledge practices was the performative nature of knowledge in 
indigenous cultures. There is a recurring emphasis on the embodied 
reception of knowledge that I believe informs Gast’s painting of the 
Native Americans dancing beside the tepees. Ideas of embodied and 
communal learning also occurred in my conversations with Cher 
about her experiences in her Native Alaskan village. These ideas are 
also present in surprising ways in Leanne Betasamoske Simpson’s 
earlier book, Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg 
Re-Creation, Resurgence, and a New Emergence (Winnipeg: Arbeiter 
Ring Pub., 2013), where in one memorable passage she talks about 
how the experience of breastfeeding informs Nishnaabeg politics 
(Simpson 2013, chap. 6, doc. 92). These ideas of learning with our 
bodies and from our bodies are not wholly absent in Western thought 
(reading for example is a physical act), but it does not seem to share 
a similar place of importance. 

In Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back, Simpson also talks about the 
importance of oral storytelling in Indigenous culture—how the 
formative stories of Indigenous culture are meant to be performed 
and thus incorporate and interact with the particularities of a given 
audience and setting (Simpson 2013, chap. 6, doc. 90). There is a 
dynamism between the elder and the audience that allows for varia-
tion and new themes to emerge in old tales. Again, I find some reso-
nance here with the role of academic lecture and sermon that help 
a new audience find footing in a text, but I am struck by the contrast 
with how texts are often encountered in libraries where the reader 
alone bears the burden of understanding the texts’ meaning for 
this moment. I found the reading-room expectation that we acquire 
knowledge in quiet contemplation to be significantly different from 
Indigenous ideas of knowledge as performative where we learn 



Papers  43

through song and dance, through attention to our embodied pres-
ence in the world, and through participating in the give-and-take of 
live storytelling. 

CAMPFIRE #2

As we gather around our second campfire, I wonder: What could we 
gain from exploring how other cultures, cultures that didn’t build 
libraries, think about knowledge? Would we learn to see ourselves 
and our work in a different light? Could a change in perspective bring 
clarity to some of the issues we wrestle with? Alternately, would it 
complicate things we think are clear?

Given how much there is already to do and learn, how can we 
either individually or as a profession make space to listen to the 
experiences of communities that have different starting assump-
tions, different problems, and different answers? Doing this well 
would surely take intention, patience, and a level of vulnerability 
that is uncomfortable. 

As I mull this over around my imagined fire, I ultimately wonder 
if we can make space for the persistence of difference. Can we allow 
different people to land in different places on questions of epistemol-
ogy and information best practice? Historically we have struggled to 
abide this and have fought in more or less aggressive ways to resolve 
the competition into correct and incorrect ways to proceed. 

THESIS

I want to step back from the campfire artifice momentarily to explic-
itly state my case. In the first section, I’m suggesting that we seriously 
consider the possibility that core library norms grow out of European 
epistemological practices that were used to promote White culture 
as “civilized” and denigrate other cultures as “savage”—a distinction 
that gave birth to habits of thought, institutions, and practices that 
give meaning to the phrase “White supremacy.” Furthermore, I think, 
in the case of libraries, it is possible that this connection informs 
foundational principles and can’t be easily undone. 

The claim here is that the library project is morally complex. I 
don’t wish to deny that good has come from libraries as a group or 
specific libraries and librarians. But I think we need to reflect on 
the troubling reality that libraries can also be experienced as, and 



44  AT L A 202 1 PROCEEDINGS

can perpetuate, oppression including race-based oppression. I’m 
encouraged by diversity audits, social justice programming, and 
other current attempts by libraries to promote equity, but I’m not 
sure they speak to ways librarianship as an intellectual project is an 
expression of a particular historic culture and as such share in the 
strengths and moral failings of that culture.

In the second part, I’m advocating for taking time to learn about 
the epistemological practices of other cultures. I think that can help 
us bring into view the way libraries embody the practices of a partic-
ular historic community. Libraries thus become contextualized as a 
way to collect and transmit knowledge, not THE way to do this. 

I feel—but ultimately want to warn against—the temptation to 
seek a synthesis of European and Indigenous American knowledge 
practices. The facile appropriation of the deep cultural practices of 
the other do little to promote justice and easily become just another 
form of colonialism. Rather, I’m hoping that by learning about native 
communities, I can gain a better understanding of my own culture 
and traditions. That what I once naively assumed were universal 
norms may come to be more correctly understood as connected to 
the history of my culture and my people. 

But simply learning about the cultural other, at this late date, 
seems (and is) an inadequate response to the dispossession and 
suffering inflicted by the attempt to civilize the other, to say nothing 
of the attempts to enslave or exterminate those who were deemed 
less than human.  In my final section, I want to look at what theologi-
cal librarians have to offer as we wrestle with how to move forward. 

POTENTIAL CONTRIBUTIONS OF THEOLOGICAL LIBRARIANS

Many of us in Atla have had advanced training in both librarianship 
and theology. I think this training positions us to bring to the profes-
sion of librarianship theological insights and learning that can assist 
all librarians in advancing the cause of justice. 

I want to begin by talking about humility. It is sadly true that theo-
logians and theological institutions have a very spotty record when 
it comes to the actual practice of humility. However, reflections on 
the meaning of humility have been a persistent part of theological 
discourse and provide rich soil to dig for new language and ideas 
of how our professional community can understand its work and 
legacy. 



Papers  45

I have in mind passages like this one, where Paul, writing in 
Romans, says:

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not 
think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of 
yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has 
distributed to each of you. (Romans 12:3)

In a world that struggles with moral nuance, the command to 
“think of yourself with sober judgment” primes us to expect complex-
ity.  This is just one of many theological texts that wrestle with the 
inestimable worth and dignity of each human being, but also the 
moral failings that plague us all. I believe these conversations may 
provide a helpful guide in thinking about how to affirm what is good 
and worthy about the work we do while also being able to be honest 
about our shortcomings. 

Second, the trail of victims of White supremacy cries out for a 
response more substantive than an apology and pledge to do better 
in the future. Here again I think the centuries of theological reflec-
tion on the nature of sin and models of redemption provide a tool-
kit to help us understand depth of moral pollution and what forms 
atonement might take. I find it interesting that many people resort to 
the language of original sin to describe the impact of racism on the 
United States. Admittedly there are a variety of theological opinions 
on the nature of sin and atonement that speak to the profound nature 
of these concepts. But I hold out hope that as libraries wrestle with 
the taint of White supremacy, theological librarians might be able 
to offer language and insights from these theological conversations 
that can provide intellectual footholds for our colleagues and lead 
to productive reflection on our ways forward. 

Finally, religion has long reflected on the nature of hope and 
renewal and the practices that sustain hope in dark times. I have in 
mind here the disruptive and generative imagination of the prophet 
in exile offering not a quick fix, but a vision of a day when the wrongs 
are made right and the impure will be purified—a time when justice 
will reign.  As we collectively wrestle with the many ways racism 
is built into the structures and institutions of our society and how 
endless the struggle for justice seems, I wonder: what insights and 
practices can we find in our discipline to strengthen and sustain us 
for the difficult task at hand?



46  AT L A 202 1 PROCEEDINGS

CAMPFIRE #3

I opened by talking about how I often reflect around a campfire on 
our shared experiences with our most ancient ancestors. As the stew-
ards of the millenniums of religious questions, songs, and conversa-
tions, I wonder what aids we may find in our collections. How does 
our contemporary experience of injustice, suffering, and moral fail-
ing connect with those of our forefathers and foremothers? What 
might we be able to learn from them? In this moment of soul-search-
ing and lament, is there another opportunity to find connections with 
the larger human story? 

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Coulthard, Glen Sean. 2014. Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the 
Colonial Politics of Recognition. Minneapolis: University of 
Minnesota Press. 

Gohr, Michelle. 2017. “Ethnic and Racial Diversity in Libraries: How 
White Allies Can Support Arguments for Decolonization.” Journal 
of Radical Librarianship 3: 42-58.

Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. 2017. As We Have Always Done: 
Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance. Minneapolis, 
MN: University of Minnesota Press.

------. 2013. Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg 
Re-Creation, Resurgence and a New Emergence. Winnipeg: Arbe-
iter Ring Pub. Nook.

Wilson, Shawn. 2008. Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research 
Methods. Black Point, N.S: Fernwood Pub.


