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Preliminary analysis of the over 50 Interviews conducted suggest a few initial trends:

1) Many parents get books for their children through free book giveaways and NOT libraries.

2) Tribal members highly value literacy, books, and the need to prioritize funding to make sure books are available for their children and youth.

3) Most participants saw libraries only as a place for books and computers.

4) One of the resources mentioned most often that they want to see more of was their own history and culture reflected.

5) Some were not aware the Blackfeet Community College Library was available to the general public.

Deeper analysis of the data will be conducted soon.

A big thank you to Glacier Public Library and Valier Public Library for meeting with us to discuss library services for Blackfeet Tribal Members.

Did I mention that Blackfeet Tribal lands are stunningly beautiful?

Hard to stop taking pictures….

Loriene, Anthony, Kathy, Aaron, Bruce, and Jenny at Valier public library.

Aaron, Anthony, Jamie, Bruce, Jennie, and Loriene at Cut Bank Public library.

We helped Medicine Springs Library pass out 500 free books at the Blackfeet Nation Youth Day!

Thank you to all the wonderful families who shared their thoughts about access to reading and libraries at the 2018 Blackfeet Nation Youth Day.

Anthony in front of the Blackfeet Tribal Library

Libraries indeed transform!

Dr. Chow and Dr. Roy with painting depicting why libraries are important to The Blackfeet Nation.

Jimi, Browning elementary school librarian, believes their reading scores are so low because of a mix of poverty, distance from libraries, adult illeteracy, and too assertively trying to force students to read.

Shonti believes books and libraries are essential to her and her son’s future.

Kyle saw that the kids who read a lot when they were children went to college. Those who did not did not.

After a year of working together and corresponding by phone, email, text, and video conference all three us finally meet in person!

Anthony, Loriene, and Aaron.

Preliminary analysis of American Indian reading scores in Montana show an interesting relationship between distance a school is from a public library and reading scores: the highest performing schools are 3.8 miles away from a public library on average while the lowest are 17.8!

On Tuesday 7/10 the Reading Nation will begin a week long meeting with members of the Blackfeet Nation in Browning, MT to discuss literacy and access to libraries.

We want to thank our wonderful Advisory Board for our first meeting, which was held on Monday June 18, 2018. We will meet once every quarter (every three months) and several of our advisory board members will be helping collect data at the upcoming Blackfeet powwow taking place July 12-July 15, 2018.

View the members of the Reading Nation advisory board here.