Published: October 29, 2024
By: Alison Lang, UTL News
In the world of academia, there is a great deal of emphasis placed upon the importance and sanctity of the written word. And while texts and physical materials are critically important, it is equally essential that students, faculty and librarians alike engage with narratives that have never been put to paper, to help deepen scholarship and our understanding of the world around us.
A new lecture series at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library seeks to engage audiences through sharing ideas, scholarship and traditions rooted in Indigenous stories – many of which exist solely through oral communication.
The inaugural “Beyond The Page: The J. Edward Chamberlin Lecture” took place on October 22 in the Fisher Library. It was established by the McLean Foundation in the name of Ted Chamberlin, University Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto.
The series’ subject matter is one that is close to Chamberlin’s heart, and his life’s work. In addition to his prodigious career as an academic and writer, Chamberlin has worked extensively on Indigenous land claims in Canada and all over the world. Many of these trips, he says, have involved listening to people - their stories, ideas, traditions - and listening deeply.
“This type of series will get audiences out of the veranda and into the fields, so to speak,” he says over the phone from his home in Victoria, B.C. “We need to get away from the notion that the serious world is written down on paper. The Beyond the Page series will serve as a reminder that for much of the world, oral performance is at the heart of knowledge.”
This sensibility was rooted in the series’ first lecture, titled “Living Treaties in Toronto: Anishinaabe Law and the More-than-Human World”, and presented by U of T Loveland Chair of Indigenous Law and member of the Nawash First Nation, Professor John Borrows.
Preceded by a drum performance by Daniel Secord, a member of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, Professor Borrows’ talk explored how First Nations communities forged agreements with the plants and animals at the dawn of creation in order to live in harmony. He also discussed what these treaties can teach us today.
The Beyond the Page series has been entrusted to the Fisher Library to steward and curate for many years to come. It acknowledges that the library community has a unique responsibility towards Indigenous communities and the important Indigenous materials in its collections.
This new lecture series is an additional pillar in the library system’s ongoing work to advance its commitments to reconciliation, managing Indigenous relationships and materials with great intentionality and care. This can be seen in the ways librarians continue to critically revisit the ways in which Indigenous materials are catalogued and collected, as well as the Indian Residential School Survivors’ Storybase, a project led by U of T librarians that aims to make the stories of residential school survivors more accessible by compiling accounts from across the internet into a single searchable resource.
There is always more work to be done, and more stories to be heard. Chamberlin says he hopes that future Beyond the Page lectures will continue to open up ideas and relationships that audiences had never thought about, and consider new ways of working and engaging with Indigenous narratives, traditions and scholarship.
“I hope people become – in the noblest of ways – taken in by the wonder of these ideas, about what they can do and what they need to do in understanding the lives, ambitions, spiritual beliefs and relationships of the speakers, and their communities,” he says. "I want people to really listen, and to think about ways they can change the community they live in, which is in community with Indigenous people."
