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 school book 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 operations of academic libraries and explore in the writings of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, an indigenous alternative to knowledge preservation and transmission.
