Camas Bookstore and Infoshop
Encyclopedia
Infoshop
An infoshop is a storefront or social center that serves as a node for the distribution of political information, typically in the form of books, zines, stickers and posters. Infoshops often serve as a meeting space and resource hub for local activist groups....
, bookstore and autonomous space located on Lekwungen Territory in Victoria, British Columbia
Victoria, British Columbia
Victoria is the capital city of British Columbia, Canada and is located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of about 78,000 within the metropolitan area of Greater Victoria, which has a population of 360,063, the 15th most populous Canadian...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. Camas first opened its doors in September 2007, with the intention of providing a voice for anti-authoritarian
Anti-authoritarian
Anti-authoritarianism is opposition to authoritarianism, which is defined as a "political doctrine advocating the principle of absolute rule: absolutism, autocracy, despotism, dictatorship, totalitarianism." Anti-authoritarians usually believe in full equality before the law and strong civil...
and anti-colonial perspectives and local struggles, and helping to foster a spirit of solidarity with other such struggles taking place globally.
Camas provides literature on topics including: anti-imperialism
Anti-imperialism
Anti-imperialism, strictly speaking, is a term that may be applied to a movement opposed to any form of colonialism or imperialism. Anti-imperialism includes opposition to wars of conquest, particularly of non-contiguous territory or people with a different language or culture; it also includes...
, indigenous peoples, black power
Black Power
Black Power is a political slogan and a name for various associated ideologies. It is used in the movement among people of Black African descent throughout the world, though primarily by African Americans in the United States...
, queer/trans, feminism
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
, radical and local ecology, health and food security, DIY/self-sufficiency, and anarchism
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
. Many of the books that Camas sells are donated from the community, and as a not-for-profit and volunteer-run project, all of the revenues generated from book sales are put towards keeping the space alive and thereby offering an active place for people to meet, organize projects, hold events or discussion groups, and to build non-hierarchical networks and communities of mutual aid
Mutualism (economic theory)
Mutualism is an anarchist school of thought that originates in the writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who envisioned a society where each person might possess a means of production, either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labor in the free market...
, autonomous from state
State (polity)
A state is an organized political community, living under a government. States may be sovereign and may enjoy a monopoly on the legal initiation of force and are not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state. Many states are federated states which participate in a federal union...
or corporate
Corporation
A corporation is created under the laws of a state as a separate legal entity that has privileges and liabilities that are distinct from those of its members. There are many different forms of corporations, most of which are used to conduct business. Early corporations were established by charter...
dependency.
Name and symbolism
The collective is named in honour of the camasCamassia
Camassia is a genus of six species native to western North America, from southern British Columbia to northern California, and east to Utah, Wyoming and Montana...
plant (camassia quamash), which was once cultivated and harvested as a root vegetable by the local Lekwungen prior to European settlement. With the arrival of European settlers and colonialism, the harvest quickly came to an end as the camas meadows in the region were largely destroyed by the settlers’ cattle
Cattle
Cattle are the most common type of large domesticated ungulates. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae, are the most widespread species of the genus Bos, and are most commonly classified collectively as Bos primigenius...
grazing practices, as well as the encroachment of the settlers’ agricultural lands and eventually urbanization
Urbanization
Urbanization, urbanisation or urban drift is the physical growth of urban areas as a result of global change. The United Nations projected that half of the world's population would live in urban areas at the end of 2008....
. More recently, efforts have been made to revive the harvest. The camas flower thus signifies the importance of acknowledging the history of colonization in the territory on which the bookstore is situated, as well as the ongoing struggles against colonialism today. The collective envisions the camas flower one day being able to blossom forth from beneath the pavement that now restrains it, flourishing on this land once again. The symbol of the camas also captures the importance of ecological struggle as well as local sustenance and food security as central aspects of the broader struggles against capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
and colonialism.