Footsteps Episode 7

Welcome to Footsteps, the podcast of the Master of Human Rights program housed in the Faculty of Law at the University of Manitoba. Join us as we explore and uncover inspiring stories about human rights, human rights education, and the remarkable journeys of our students, human rights advocates, and changemakers. We're excited to have you with us on this journey.

Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Footsteps. I'm Maddy Nowosad, an upper year student in the Master of Human Rights program and your host for today's episode.

Access to information is a human right, and just because you're in prison, you don't lose those rights.

That was Kirsten Wurmann, a librarian who serves as program coordinator with the Manitoba Library who oversees the Prison Libraries Committee. The committee was formed 10 years ago under Kirsten's leadership as its founding chair, and it continues to provide collections, programming, and library awareness for people who are incarcerated in Manitoba. Kirsten also helped launch the Greater Edmonton Library Association Prison Project and brings almost 20 years of volunteer experience in Canadian prison libraries to her role. Today, she joins us as the practicum supervisor of fellow Master of Human Rights student Ege Kaymaz.

Kirsten and Ege, thanks so much for joining us today.

Thanks for having us.

Yes. Thanks for inviting us Maddy.

Maddy: There are so many things that I want to talk about today. You're both such knowledgeable and passionate advocates working to improve literacy and access to the right to read, specifically for incarcerated Manitobans and Canadians. Do either of you remember your earliest experience that sparked your interest in human rights?

Ege: Growing up, I think I was told to stay with the weak against the strong. Like, that kind of thinking made me conscious of the social inequalities and issues. And then as I grew up, you know, the idea of human rights came along. Right now, even though I don't really think that “human rights” as an idea or an institution or way of thinking does help the weak against the strong, but I think it's a nice sort of idea that can be pivoted to be used for the help of the weak against the strong.

Kirsten: I think that's really well said. My mom was a social worker, my dad was a teacher, and I think there was just always this sort of sense of responsibility also to sort of fight for social justice. My mom was also a raging granny, and that inspired not only myself, but then my child as well, so I think my parents were a big, big influence.

My sister is Indigenous. We lived up in the Yukon, and she came into our family when she was 10 months old, and I was actually 10 months old as well, so I grew up with her and still grow up with her, obviously. Right from a very early age, I could see the inequity. I could see how she was treated differently than I was, and it just wasn't right. And I think as a child, you have a really strong sense of what's right and what's wrong.

Maddy: Ege, how did you find your way to the Master of Human Rights program?

Ege: Before joining the program, I was employed in Saskatoon. I was in like an office job and I was kind of bored with that because I think I wanted something more tangible from working and getting the salary wasn't enough for me. I literally looked every master's program in Canada and this one looked like something I can do and while applying I wasn't even thinking that I would get in, but it worked and I'm here right now and I'm really happy about that.

Maddy: And once you were in the program, how did you make the connection with Kirsten and decide that you wanted to complete your practicum with the Prison Libraries Committee?

Ege: Well, I was taking the Access to Justice class with Natasha Brown and she invited Kirsten as a guest lecturer. I was really interested in the things she said because I also have people in my family who had spent many years incarcerated. They were mostly like political stuff and I kind of grow also grow up listening to their stories and the treatment they received in prisons and when I realized that I might have the chance to work in prisons to better some people's living conditions, their mental conditions, their material conditions. I asked Kirsten just right after her lecture if I can do my practicum with her and it worked out.

Maddy: There's still a lot of stigma around supporting incarcerated people and advocating for the rights of incarcerated people. And we see this in the systemic barriers and the stereotypes that limit formerly incarcerated people's access to housing and employment and health care and other services. I'm wondering if in your work, if either you encounter people who question the value of your work or simply don't understand why you chose this area? And how do you respond when that comes up?

Kirsten: Yeah, and I get asked the question all the time, how did you get involved? Because I've been involved now for two decades. I really have found that speaking to the public, speaking to media, sharing our experiences has been really important in the truth telling. I think as soon as folks learn about what the realities are inside prison, I mean, even Ege was saying that, you know, I just assumed that everybody has access to books and a library at the bare minimum. And when people learn that they don't, and then you add on it all the other realities of being incarcerated, like almost 80% now are actually in remand. They're legally innocent, but they're incarcerated. They're already being punished and they're already being harmed. And you share those stories and I think it can't help but have an impact. But that's not to say that reaches everybody and that's why the advocacy is so important.

Ege: I think the one question I received is that, you know, there are lots of people are hungry. Why do you focus on people in prisons while like there are so many other problems

that are happening? I think I understand where people are coming from. But I believe that we can have like anything. This is such a rich nation. We have resources to do everything. I don't think that you can sacrifice like someone for like some other people's gains. So I just like categorically reject that question because like we have enough for everyone in this country.

Kirsten: And we are talking about community members, you know, and these are community members who are incarcerated and these are community members who will join us back in community so they deserve rights - they deserve access to rights.

Maddy: Right. And I think for those of us who aren't affected by social conditions like poverty, disability, systemic racism, and colonization that shape incarceration in our province and in our country, it can be easy to overlook these realities of prisons or become more susceptible perhaps to those narratives that dehumanize incarcerated people.

Since we're talking about literacy, one thing reading can do is keep us connected to and educated about realities that many of us have never personally faced. And so I'm wondering if there's been any books that either of you have read that shifted your perspective on prisons and the rights of incarcerated people.

Kirsten: There are a number of books that have influenced me over the years. I want to quote Marc Kruse, a professor here at Robson Hall, who talks about honoring Indigenous stories and honoring the stories of the incarcerated Indigenous person as well. It made me think of, and I'm going to bring it back to a book that's called "Waiting for the Ice Cream Man". It was written in 1978. I'm going to give it over to Ege to borrow. The photographs are by John Paskievich, who is a local photographer and visited inside Headingley and Stony Mountain prison back in the late '70s, but also is interspersed with stories and poetry. It was introduced to me by the librarian at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, actually, Stephen Carney, and he said that was always his, you know, really impactful book for him. And that really impacted me because you are hearing the lived experience of these folks. And then what's disturbing is that it was done in 1978 and here we are. And it's so many of the same stories. So, you know, inspiring to just keep at this work.

Ege: I think I'll explain this one book. I think it's important to think about it in the idea of prisons rehabilitating. I think this book has been like a really good source that challenges it. It's called Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison by Michel Foucault. Basically what he says that before the introduction of the modern states, before the French Revolution, the sole purpose of the punishment was to give pain, inflict pain on the criminal. Because when a crime has been committed, that crime was committed to the god because the king

But with the national states, once the bourgeoisie rule has been established in a way, the crimes that are committed - they become committed to the whole society instead of God. With that change, the state, they decide to stop inflicting pain and instead the idea of rehabilitation became more important because you would still need that person to be able to work after their punishment has been given. So once you look the crime system, like the justice system, as like that, then the idea of rehabilitation, it cannot really exist anymore, because once you are in the justice system, the state, they have to manufacture the kind of person that they want them to go through the system.

What they want is not usually, you know, having people being, you know, you know, people make a mistake, they do their time and they go out and they live as normal people -that's not the idea of the justice system in a modern state. They would want to criminalize people. They would want people to re-offend. The reason for that is just to create social stratas so people can see those criminals and be afraid so they would keep supporting the defensive aspects of the government.

Maddy: Earlier this year, CBC News reported that Correctional Services Canada was finalizing plans to cut all prison library positions at federal institutions. We're going to talk about the advocacy efforts around this, but when you hear about those cuts, what does it signal to you about the government's approach to rehabilitation, which, Ege, you touched on a little bit, and how does it shape the work that you're doing on the ground?

Maddy: Yeah, I think when I hear news like that, I come at it from a few different ways. One, as a librarian, because consistently it seems like our society, our funders, our government, the general public even don't really. really understand the value of libraries, library spaces, and library workers, then when you're talking about in a prison, that's even more fold. I think they don't understand that a pile of books does not a library make. And I think it's really important to understand the difference and to value the work of the library worker.

I think also in terms of the whole rehabilitation piece as well, the carceral system is working the way it was intended to work, as you were saying, Ege. And I think also people end up embroiled in the justice system because all the other systems in our society have failed. And so that's sort of a last resort, supposedly.

And I think all of these carceral systems, they are sort of built on this colonial approach, systemic racism. You see time and time again in the prison as well, the correctional investigator, Dr. Ivan Zinger, talks about information poverty within prisons, information marginalization, technology in information access - it's obsolete. It's being withheld. Access to information is a human right. And just because you're in prison, you don't lose

those rights. We do believe that if we are going to talk about rehabilitation, libraries, literacy is sort of a foundational piece.

Maddy: Right. What's the job of a librarian and especially a prison librarian?

Kirsten: First of all, there's no such role. In Manitoba prisons; in provincial prisons. We have managed to advocate and save that role in federal prisons. So Stony Mountain still has a librarian that is operating the library there. But provincially, we do not.

In terms of day-to-day, it's really, it's trying to get the books into the prisons, the books that are asked for, the books that are needed, not the books that the institution thinks they need. So we try our very best to do our work that is very participant-led. We aren't the experts in this. We're in a hugely unfamiliar space and we need to have the input from our patrons. And that's how we see them, you know, they're patrons.

A lot of my volunteer job is to continue to try and work through the bureaucracy of Corrections. We really want to go in there and then help actually sort the books and make them more accessible and findable by folks. And some of that is also us just reminding the superintendents and reminding the guards and the staff that are there that these collections exist. Because we hear time and time again from loved ones and family members and from folks who are incarcerated, “I didn't know that these books existed. I didn't know that there's an Indigenous collection. I didn't know there's a legal collection.” That information should be shared. And so we're trying to find ways to do that.

Maddy: After volunteering, as you said, for over 20 years, I'm sure you've built a lot of strong relationships and had some really powerful interactions. I was wondering if you'd be willing to share one story with us that maybe keeps you going through some of those policy decisions that can be very frustrating.

Kirsten: Yeah, it is hard to just come up with one story, and certainly it's the community of folks that do this work that is also really inspiring and motivating, but ultimately it is the folks that I've met inside and outside the carceral spaces who continue to inspire me.

Sometimes what I think about is doing our little book exchange at the women's prison where we put a bunch of displays of books up. And, you know, one of the women, she just came like a beeline in because she could see Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist on display. And she was so excited. There was just like such a squeal of excitement. And those are the images that I keep in my mind when I'm doing this work because this little moment that we provide some of these folks with a book, with something that they get to choose for themselves, that personal autonomy. I mean, that's the joy of any library, and you want to see that joy also in a prison.

Maddy: I love what you said about autonomy and choice there, and I just want to bring it out.

Kirsten: It's a human moment. It's bringing some humanity into a space where you really find very little humanity.

Maddy: And Ege, what are some tasks that you're doing as part of your practicum with the Prison Libraries Committee?

Ege: It's really nice to be working with Kirsten. She's a really inspiring person. You get to do something different each day. Every week I get a new one that's completely different than the week before.

For example, I did like a small research project about how Canada's prison assist regime regarding access to information compared to like human rights standards, like the Mandela rules and everything. I was in the Manitoba Youth Centre and I was giving away leaflets and information for the youth inside there. The week before, I was here in the Access to Justice panel giving a small talk to the people in there, so it's always really different. and that makes it really fresh and exciting all the time.

Maddy: When we talk about prison libraries, we've talked about how they're more than just even access to information, but kind of more like what that access to information does.

Kirsten: Yeah, you know, I think a really big thing about libraries in and outside of prison is being there to counter misinformation. We hear a lot of misinformation about prisons, about bail, and that perpetuates this idea that, you know, our society is more and more dangerous. And certainly there are huge societal issues that are happening in our communities right now, but I really feel like libraries have a role when they see inaccuracies to provide the information.

I think also it just really is so important that in or out of prison in any of these sort of institutions, we need to be much more culturally responsive. That takes relationship building and that also to go back to Marc Kruse, we need to also honour those stories and respect them.

Maddy: Going back to access to information and what it makes possible, like the example that you gave of countering misinformation. What are some important opportunities or experiences that information access creates for incarcerated folks?

Kirsten: When I was in Edmonton, we started the Storybook Project, which also exists here. The John Howard Society does it. E. Fry does it as well. So we've left it to them to do such a beautiful job of that because reading to kids and that relationship building and that nurturing of that relationship is so important.

But I know talking to the librarian at Stony Mountain, part of her work is also working with the guys because it might feel really awkward to be talking. You know when you talk to your kid, maybe here are some things. Because literacy isn't just about the written word either, right? Lots of people just think, well, it's about reading the book. Well, I mean, I had a guy come to me and he said, I don't read, but my roommate is going to read to me. So some of it, it's the oral, but it's also movement, painting, shapes, colors, graphic novels are so important. But having the father be comfortable in sharing a story, whether he's reading it or just telling it aloud. Even if it's a story about what he ate today, you know, or yeah, so that kind of relationship building and nurturing.

Maddy: Ege, I want to go back a little bit. You mentioned your research and then also a conference.

Ege: In our program, we get to explore or international standards, what the UN or other bodies have set the rules for different things. And there's also one for the minimum treatment of prisoners, and that's also called the Mandela rules. I get to investigate those rules. I think one thing I found maybe lacking in them is that it was written before the spread of the internet. So you usually don't have any specific things written on people's right to access internet sources.

Even though incarcerated people have the right to access to information like legal, educational, recreational information. It does not say the form of it. Because of that, right now in Manitoba, you usually have almost no access to the internet. Like, I couldn't believe that it was true. But you have to pay for the minute you use them.

Maddy: What type of impacts does that have on incarcerated folks?

Kirsten: It's setting folks up for failure if they don't have access to the technologies. How are they supposed to succeed in this information-driven world that we live in? There are other countries that offer access to the internet. There are ways to do it, and bringing in tablets that the incarcerated person has to pay for, it's shameful. It's making a lot of money for these businesses. Meanwhile, family members are in debt thousands of dollars because they're so desperate to keep in touch. It costs money to send a photo. It costs money to receive a photo.

Maddy: Ege, I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about the legal literacy project that you're working on with the Prison Libraries Committee.

Ege: Right now, I have different projects that I've been working on, and one of them is to have a artist visiting the Manitoba Youth Center for hosting graphic novel workshop with the youth inside and our aim for doing this workshop is to improve people's multi-literacy skills

because literacy skills it's not just about you know reading like a thousand page book because that maybe just requires you to have like a long attention span.

But what we want is that people being able to get specific information from like shorter texts or understand written things in different ways from different sources. And we thought that a graphic novel will be able to facilitate that, since it's both usual with the pictures. It also helps with people understanding more complex stories, because you might be stuck with either having, like, you know, happy ending stories, or you might be stuck with stories that are always getting bad, like in a pessimistic way, but life is more complex, and there's sometimes sometimes go down and graphic novels are a good medium to translate the story of life that cannot be good or bad all the time.

Maddy: Is the content of the graphic novel on legal ideas specifically, or is it capture lived experience?

Kirsten: Lived experience. Ege also was working on creating an infographic about the Mandela rules, choosing some of the pieces, because that is a question we get asked quite often from folks, like, what are the Mandela rules? And so instead of just sending them the PDF document, if we can have an infographic, then that's also something. Because Canada has signed on to all of these international statements and rules, and so they need to abide by them as well, and we need to have knowledge about them.

Ege: Yeah, that's another thing that I was working on. It's just like 2 sheets in really simple forms explaining what are Mandela rules. It is about Nelson Mandela, what he did, and also providing specific rules important for people to know because their rights are written in there. I also thought them knowing those rights would be an initiative for them to ask for more from the system they are currently in because Mandela rules, they're also known as the minimum treatment for prisoners. If they are asking for the Mandela rules to be applied, they are asking for the minimum to be given to them. And that means the minimum is not being given to them.

Maddy: Is that the same graphic novel project, Kirsten, that you're also working on?

Kirsten: No, so that's different. That's sort of, that's something to involve the youth in actually creating themselves and as a format to share some of their experiences. This is a project that we have been working on over the last year.

It is based on the legal experiences that folks have had. Of course, it's interspersed with all sorts of other experiences because nothing is done in a vacuum. Everything is interrelated. So I interviewed, met with some folks who had spent time in prison, are currently engaged in the justice system. to just hear their stories. That took, you know, quite a long time, relationship building, and trying to do it in a good way. We actually ended up hiring a

cultural consultant, Lynn Zawatsky [spelling to be confirmed]. And so she's really been just amazing in helping guide me in this work.

And we will be telling the stories, and then interspersed is the legal information that they refer to. You know, someone might be talking about strip searches that they endured with male guards as - as a woman, and then we'll have information about what the law says about strip searches. So often there will be a disconnect between the lived experience and what the law says. So right now we're in the process of actually getting those, the scripts finalized, and the artists are working on them.

We're working with Sam Beiko, who is a graphic novelist. You know, the folks that I interviewed, they're really considered co-creators, and so we've been sending them every step of the way for feedback. I'm really excited about it, and again, it's just of getting information out.

We want to make it available for free to family members. We work closely with Bar None Prison Rideshare Program, who offer rides to loved ones to prisons, and we would love to have the graphic novel available in the cars when they're being driven. And here, you know, here's a book for you that might be helpful as it talks about the legal process, but it also talks about stories that they can relate to, and then they can also read the law, maybe. can help advocate. We’ll also have resources available as well at the pack.

Maddy: How do you approach the relationship building process in your work? And do you have any advice for human rights students and advocates as they engage in that process?

Kirsten: I'm always very, very aware of my privilege and where I come from. This experience with the graphic novel has made me realize, especially if you're working here in Manitoba, needs to be indigenous led, needs to be participant led, you need to listen to those folks, but you also need to, you need to pay people, you need to understand that when you're offering tobacco, for instance, it's not just a thank you. You're entering into a contract. You're entering into a relationship, actually. So it doesn't just end when I've turned the microphone off. That that has to continue, and that is my responsibility. And I think that that needs to be considered by researchers, by human rights folks. We can't just be going in and taking, and we need to be really aware of why we are doing this work.

Maddy: One other thing that you touched on that I really liked as well is that it takes time. You’re like, this is a long project.

Kirsten: Yes. Well, I mean, even the work that we've been doing with the Prison Libraries Committee, we started in 2012. And I think sometimes when people come on board with us, it can be really frustrating because it's also relationship building with corrections and with the guards. And that can be really, really tough. And it also takes a long, long time.

Maddy: What do you imagine or hope for when you think about the work ahead?

Ege: Honestly, I'm a little bit pessimistic, I guess. The world might be going into tougher times, but that's not all so bad because I believe that any change that's going to come - achieve the things that we want - they will be coming from bottom to up. It won't be coming from up to bottom. The acts of our rulers, if they are so bad for us, then the bottom will change them.

Kirsten: Yeah, I was just at a talk by El Jones. She talked about “courage is collective”, so I'm just sort of jumping on that Ege. The more that we work together as a collective against some of these injustices. I personally feel some sense of optimism by surrounding myself with these inspiring folks that I meet in the prison. Sometimes we have to kind of focus on just small things in order to keep up that sense of hope.

We do a lot of advocacy, so we have been really advocating. We need to have something in our legislation that in the Corrections Act that every prison must have a library. So the minister of Justice, we had meetings with them. They said, okay, we'll do a policy. That was, I think, two years ago now, and they've never been able to share it with us because the corrections policies are not available to the public. Even though the Prison Libraries Committee goes in there and does a lot of this work and asked for this, they weren't able to share the policy with us.

We have some friends who did a Freedom of Information request, and we did get access to the policy, but like in terms of literacy, and I was thinking of this, when you were talking, Ege, they define literacy about being able to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, and compute using printed and written materials. That's literacy for them. And we had said to them, we would like to help you with this policy. But ultimately, they say we're in partnership with the Prison Libraries Committee, supporting them to establish these collections and these libraries.

So I guess there's some new, renewed motivation to continue this work, and just the number of people who are coming on board and helping out. It's great, and it gives me hope.

With the federal cuts again, I think they thought this would be like a no-brainer. Oh, we'll just get rid of the library workers. And instead, we sort of gathered our networks, wrote open letters, did a letter-writing campaign. I've been to organizing meetings, and I know that often it's said, oh, the letter-writing campaigns never work, but I don't know. It worked this time. They had op-eds. They listened, and they reversed their decision, which has never been heard of. Even if you maybe thought, oh, this will never work, it works. You just keep trying, you keep poking.

Maddy: Whose footsteps do you feel you're following in as you do this work?

Ege: Living a life where I can stay by the weak against the strong. To do that, I think I'm mostly inspired by my grandfather. He has spent maybe all of his life doing that. He had ended up spending a lot of time in prison as well. Back in like 80s, I know that didn't stop him, didn't stop him from trying to teach me about these things.

Kirsten: The very first person I met who introduced me to this work I worked with at the University of Alberta for a public legal education organization and her name is Suzanne and I didn't realize she had been incarcerated but as we got to know each other and got to be friends and talked about her experiences of being the inmate librarian and how impactful that was and how important that work was you know I ended up going to the prison seeing the library me now in retrospect that was an amazing library. I was kind of shocked when I saw it. But that really got me trying to support that particular prison with better library and literacy access.

But Suzanne was just so inspiring in terms of how she saw the library and saw access to information. But also when she left prison, she continued to help. When other women got out of prison, there isn't a lot of support. She and her partner, they had this like cell phone and 24/7 they were there to answer the cell phone, just volunteers, they just did it themselves. I just thought to continue that work and that support and that care. I think of her all the time and she's definitely someone whose footsteps I am following.

Maddy: Thank you both again so much for being here with us at Robson Hall today and sharing your story and your knowledge and your work. We really appreciate it.

Kirsten: Anytime.

Ege: Thanks for inviting us.

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