On the last day of school at Wyoming Indian Middle School in Ethete, a group of students congregated in the library, singing along to Disney and pop songs at the top of their lungs.
The room was due for some new cupboards, so it was being turned inside out as everyone helped re-organize. But for the moment?
“We're having a dance break! A dance and eating break,” said Jenn Runs Close To Lodge, the middle school cultural mentor and librarian.
Runs Close To Lodge is an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Tribe and said the students have also been working on another project: setting up the new Indigenous social-emotional support book collection organized by themes like courage and respect. The goal is to prioritize learning that’s grounded in Indigenous stories and values.
“They had to put the stickers on them so that it would be easy for our students to be able to identify, is this one about resilience? Well, I want to read about resilience and what is resilience,” said Runs Close To Lodge.
It’s meant to help kids learn how to have healthy relationships with themselves and others, make responsible decisions and better understand their feelings. And starting this fall, the Wyoming Indian Elementary School, Middle School and High School will each have a new addition to their libraries.
The new books at the middle school library are inside a hip-high wooden case with wheels. But instead of being organized alphabetically, they’re arranged by brightly colored stickers representing different values.
“We have ‘Visual Language: The Ledger Drawings of Dwayne Wilcox,’ one of my favorite ledger artists. The yellow sticker identifies that as creativity,” said Runs Close To Lodge.
The eight values included in the collection align with the Wyoming Indian School District’s overall strategic plan.
“Here we have ‘Super Indian' by Arigon Starr,” she said, pulling out a comic book with a superhero on the cover. That one’s marked for persistence.
There are books from well-known Native authors, like Joy Harjo and Tommy Orange, and the collection spans a wide range of topics, from the intergenerational trauma of boarding schools to dancing and sports.
“Here’s ‘Native Hoops: The Rise of American Indian Basketball,’” said the librarian. “Wyoming Indian [Schools], we're big on basketball and we need to learn more about the history. This has been identified as wellness.”
There are all sorts of genres too: non-fiction, fiction, graphic novels, picture books and more.
“We wanted all different levels, all different types, because we want to appeal to as many kids as possible,” said Runs Close To Lodge.
She said that in the wake of the COVID pandemic, a lot of students at the school have struggled socially and emotionally. Her hope is that the books can have a sort of ripple effect.
“You can take that idea and take it home – ‘This is what courage is.’ That permeates in your family and your interactions with others. That's what we want,” she said.
Elena Singer is the director of Language and Culture Department at Wyoming Indian Schools and is Northern Arapaho and Oglala Lakota. She said they’re getting a lot of new books out.
“The elementary has over 90 new titles with multiple copies, the middle school has over 68 new titles and the Donnie Chavez Library at the high school has over 80 new titles,” she said.
The funding for the collections came from the Stepping Stones Grant through the National Indian Impacted Schools Association. Many of the books were ordered from Birchbark Books, a store in Minneapolis owned by author Louise Erdrich, an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians.
Singer said the goal is that students and staff will use the new collection at least four times a month.
“It would be great to do lessons that align for these books … Seeing what books are getting checked out the most, we can go off that data to see, ‘Okay, they love this book, let's make lessons about this one,’” she said.
Avalene Glenmore is the other half of the Language and Culture team at Wyoming Indian Schools and works as the cultural instructional facilitator.
She’s a member of the Northern Arapaho Tribe and her Arapaho name is Hono’ Niibei, which means Sky Singer.
She helped compile a book of traditional Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho stories that’s also in the new collection.
“A lot of them are moral stories because that's how our children learned a long time ago, through story and storytelling,” she said.
Glenmore said the stories came from recordings of elders made by the department in the past, who’d tell stories to pass down.
“‘The Buffalo and the Magpie,’ that's a Shoshone story. It came from Jack Guina and was collected in 1979. That value is encouragement,” she said.
Glenmore grew up hearing traditional Arapaho stories in her home, but she knows that’s not the case for a lot of students now. She said she hopes these resources can help fill that gap.
“So much has changed over the years, the family dynamics. That's just one thing I would wish for our children,” she said.
Back in the library, Jenn Runs Close To Lodge said even the colorful geometric designs on the cabinet holding the books have Indigenous roots. It’s based on the design of a traditional Arapaho woman’s tool bag, but the colors have been adapted to be the colors of the Wyoming Indian Schools.
“In the bag, you had everything that you needed to make clothing, to help you prepare food, to help you in your everyday life, including building shelters for yourself and your family,” she said.
She and her 8th grade media class came up with the design and talked together about having the skills to not just survive, but thrive. She said the intentionally-designed cabinet is a fitting place for the social-emotional books to live.
“Learning to become an adult, a healthy adult, a healthy Indigenous adult. We thought, 'That's what it is.' We all need those tools in our tool bag, so this is our tool bag,” she said.
The library at Wyoming Indian Middle School is planning to have a grand opening for the collection this fall.
