(Fort Washakie, WY) – Community members are invited to the grand opening of the Wind River Little Library located at 3 North Fork Road on July 23rd at 11 am.
Once the Little Library is installed, books can be placed inside, and people can take and/or leave books. There is no need to sign up for a membership card to have access to a Little Free Library and no penalty for not returning books.
There are Little Free Libraries located in Lander and Riverton, which are far sites for families who live on the Wind River Reservation.
The project was led by a group of Fort Washakie educators and Amanda LeClair-Diaz, a graduate student at the University of Arizona originally from Ft. Washakie, who shared the following:
“Native youth and all reservation community members deserve to read books where they can connect with characters who look like them and recognize their lived experiences in the stories. Especially for young readers, recognizing themselves in stories can engage their interests in reading materials and improve overall learning.
“Despite the positive impacts reading can have on children, there is a major lack of authentic representation of characters from underrepresented groups (i.e., black, Indigenous, people of color, disabled, LGBTQ characters) in children’s literature in the United States.
“Over half of children’s books have stories that feature white characters, while 27 percent of books have characters who are animal or non-human (Dahlen, 2019). The number of children’s books featuring characters from underrepresented groups is significantly lower than books with white or animal/nonhuman characters.
“Specifically, less than one percent of children’s books in the United States have Indigenous characters (Dahlen, 2019). This means most of the literature Indigenous youth and their families are reading feature characters who do not represent them.”
The above information inspired the group to apply for the Impact Library program which is associated with the Little Free Library non-profit and covers the purchase of a book-sharing box, the registration plaque and fee of the book-sharing box, and provides a beginning set of books for rural communities.
“We feel this book-sharing box is a possible solution to initiate book circulation of literature that is Indigenous focused and written by Indigenous authors,” LeClair-Diaz said.
Recognizing that there are no Little Free Libraries on the Wind River Reservation, the community has been awarded an Impact Library, specifically a special Little Free Library that is their 125,000th book-sharing box.
The group of educators currently teaching at Fort Washakie School who helped with this project included Michelle Oberly-Blackburn, Jennifer Platt, D. Lynette St. Clair, Fredde Reed, Iva LeClair, Renee Crooked Arm, and Kailyn Washakie.
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