- Good evening.
My name is Tessa Michaelson Schmidt,
and I'm the director
of the Cooperative Children's Book Center,
the CCBC, a library of the School of Education.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison occupies
ancestral Ho-Chunk land,
a place their nation has called Teejop
since time immemorial.
In an 1832 treaty, the Ho-Chunk were forced
to cede this territory.
Decades of ethnic cleansing followed
when both the federal and state government repeatedly
but unsuccessfully sought to forcibly remove
the Ho-Chunk from Wisconsin.
We acknowledge the circumstances
that led to the forced removal of the Ho-Chunk people
and honor their legacy of resistance and resilience.
The history of colonization informs our work
and vision for a collaborative future.
We recognize and respect the inherent sovereignty
of the Ho-Chunk Nation and the other 11 Native Nations
within the boundaries of the state of Wisconsin.
Welcome everyone to the 2023 Charlotte Zolotow lecture.
Whether you are joining in person
here at Varsity Hall in Union South,
livestreaming via PBS Wisconsin, or viewing this recording later,
we are glad to have you part of this special event.
The CCBC established this lecture
to honor Charlotte Zolotow,
a distinguished children's book editor
at Harper Junior Books
and author of more than 65 picture books,
including such classic works
as Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present
and William's Doll.
Ms. Zolotow attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison
on a writing scholarship from 1933 to 1936,
where she studied with Professor Helen C. White.
When selecting lecturers to bring to Madison
for this special event, the CCBC librarians
consider speakers whose voices are needed,
writers who captivate us,
and creators who bring powerful stories to life.
Angeline Boulley is all of these things and more.
We are honored to have her deliver tonight's lecture.
To tell you more about Angeline,
I invite fellow librarian Cassy Leeport
to provide an introduction.
Cassy is the manager of the iSchool Library
and the Tribal Libraries Archive and Museum's TLAM project.
[audience applauding]
- [speaking Ojibwe] Boozhoo.
Niikii-bimaadiziig.
Niij-anishinaabedog.
Cassy LeePort indizhnikaaz.
Makwa Indoodem.
Gichi-Onigaming Indoojiba.
Angeline Boulley Onjibaad Baawiting Anishinaabeg.
Aadizooke mamakaj anishinaabekwe.
Miigwech bizindawiyeg.
Hello everyone.
My name is Cassy Leeport,
and I felt it was only appropriate for me
to begin my introduction using the Ojibwe language
of my ancestors because I am standing up here today
to introduce to you a magnificent storyteller,
author, and Anishinaabekwe Angeline Boulley.
Ms. Boulley is an enrolled member
of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe,
and while she now lives in southwest Michigan,
Sugar Island, setting of many of her novel scenes
in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, will always be her home.
Her first novel, Firekeeper's Daughter, was published in 2021
and it instantly became a New York Times bestseller.
Firekeeper's Daughter has won many awards
and honors, including but not limited to,
the Walter Dean Myers Award
for Outstanding Children's Literature,
The Prince Award, the William C. Morris Award
for young adult debut literature,
a Time magazine Best Young Adult Book of All Time selection,
and was an American Indian Youth Literature Award honor book.
Earlier this year, Ms. Boulley released her second novel,
Warrior Girl Unearthed.
It also became an instant New York Times bestseller
and is already gathering a lot of buzz
to have numerous awards and honors as well.
Prior to becoming a New York Times bestselling author
and household name for bookworms across the globe,
Ms. Boulley served on the Board of Regents
for Bay Mills Community College.
She was the director of education for her tribe
and most recently served as the director
for the Office of Indian Education
at the United States Department of Education.
While researching for this introduction,
I fell deeper in love with the stories
that were being told in Firekeeper's Daughter
and Warrior Girl Unearthed.
I came across a podcast in which Angeline said
that she wrote these novels to be a love letter
to Anishinaabekwe, Anishinaabe girls.
In that podcast and in her novels,
I felt like Ms. Boulley was speaking to me,
but I know that that wasn't a unique experience
for how deeply these stories resonated
with Indigenous readers across the globe.
Through her stories, her dynamic characters,
and her beautiful integration
and celebration of Ojibwe culture
and language, she has undoubtedly connected
with countless Indigenous readers across the globe.
The magic, however, of Ms. Boulley is that I know
that these novels have also impacted non-Native readers
and has served as a spotlight on issues
like the opioid epidemic, sexual assault, cultural identity,
and our stolen ancestors that speak to all
of Turtle Island and beyond.
Just like her characters,
Ms. Boulley embodies all of what it means
to be an ogichidaakwe, a warrior woman,
and I am honored to be here tonight
to be the one to introduce her to all of you.
So thank you, miigwech, everyone for being here,
and with no further ado, I will hand the mic over
to Ms. Angeline Boulley.
[audience applauding]
- [speaking Ojibwe] Boozhoo, Aaniin,
Angeline Boulley Miskwa Makwakwe Nindizhnikaaz.
Makwa Dodem.
Bawating nindonjibaa.
Chi-Miigwech, Chi-Miigwech.
Hello everyone, I'm Angeline Boulley.
I'm Bear Clan and I'm from Sault Ste. Marie Sugar Island.
We call it Sugar Island.
We call it the place of the rapids.
It's an honor to be talking with you today.
I'm quite nervous, so let me just say that.
So my debut novel, Firekeeper's Daughter,
it starts, you know, "I began as a secret and then a scandal."
And my own story started much sooner.
The story behind my story.
I'm always so curious about what makes a story.
What is it?
And mine, it started, gosh, I was five years old.
We lived in New Buffalo, Michigan.
My father is Ojibwe and my mother's non-Native.
My dad ended up becoming a truck driver
and my mom did not drive at all.
So every Saturday, we would walk with my mom
like a mama duck and the little ducklings.
We would walk to town,
and we had to hit the post office before noon,
we had to hit the bank before noon,
and then we could go to the library.
And our public library, my siblings and I,
we carried our little tote bags with us
and we could check out
however many and whatever books we wanted to.
We had that freedom to read.
And I remember, of course,
like Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys,
The Dana Girls, like, I remember
all of these mystery thrillers,
but I also remember going into the adult section
and checking out books about English royalty
and about architecture and roses and stone cottages.
And I so appreciate that...
My mom had a high school education.
My dad left school after eighth grade,
and he is still, like, the most widely-read person that I know.
And I so appreciate that my parents gave me that gift,
that freedom to read whatever captured my imagination.
And I want to expand on that tonight and talk with you.
Within the past month,
I found out that my book is included
in one of the books that has been held
and not put on bookshelves
in a community about 40 miles away from me.
It's a school, Brandywine school district,
and it's smack dab in the middle
of the Pokagan Band of Potawatomi Indians
10-county service area.
The school district,
there was a librarian there who applied
for a grant from We Need Diverse Books,
a nonprofit organization, and they won the grant
and they were awarded free books, 193 titles
that their library would have, free of cost.
Well, there are people on their school board who said,
"We didn't apply for that grant.
"Who authorized this?
"And there are some titles here that we don't agree with
and view as indoctrination."
And so my title is one of 193
that the school library has received
but is unable to put on the shelf
because of their school board.
Now...
I so appreciate that my dad, with an eighth grade education,
my mom with a high school education,
that they gave us,
my siblings and I, the freedom to choose
whatever books we wanted to read.
Allowing children and teens the freedom to read
is a gift that has paid dividends.
Through the safety of the pages of a book,
a child or teen can safely navigate obstacles,
difficult situations, intense situations,
and leave them better prepared for a future
that we wish we could control, but we cannot.
Those who fear indoctrination,
they fight access to information when access to information
and the development of critical thinking
by which to weigh new information
with existing beliefs can strengthen one's foundation.
Our core values become stronger when challenged,
assessed, reevaluated, and strengthened.
Ships are not born for the harbor,
and so indoctrination requires a culling of information.
It's not an influx of perspectives.
The freedom to read rather than the freedom from
is the best defense against indoctrination.
[audience applauding]
"Books for children and teens serve as windows,
mirrors, and sliding glass doors."
If you have heard this statement popularized,
Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop did an essay
where she talked about how literature for children
and teens can serve this important role,
that children could see themselves reflected
in the pages of a book, or they could see
into lives very different from their own.
And through the safety of the pages of a book,
they could slide that sliding glass door
and step into those lives and experience it,
develop empathy for people supposedly
very different from ourselves.
Yet when we boil it down, in our humanity,
our commonalities outweigh our differences.
We all want freedom, life, liberty.
We all want our children to be educated
and have a better life than what we had.
I so appreciate the Cooperative Children's Book Center.
They provide so much data.
For me, it was like in 2002, they started taking data
of books by Native Americans
and books about Native Americans.
And in 2002, what that showed me is that
nine times out of ten, it was a non-Native person
that got the book deal to talk about Native Americans
or have a Native as a main character.
When I was a senior in high school,
it was the first time I ever read a book
that had a Native American as a main character.
And it wasn't until I saw it in a book that I realized
I had not seen it prior.
I had been absent in every story I read up to that point,
and I didn't know it until I saw it.
That's the power of representation in books
for children and teens.
Now, that book was by an author I adore,
Lois Duncan, and I love all of her books
except for Stranger with My Face.
It relied on some stereotypes,
and the whole, like, hokey trope of this Indian maiden,
the daughter of the chief falls in love
with a white guy with a pickup truck.
And it just, [audience laughing]
it was like, "Oh, my God."
When I finished that book, I felt so cringe.
Like, I'm thinking of myself back then
and I didn't have the words to convey
how bad and almost embarrassed I felt
by the portrayal in that book.
Now I know it was representation from someone
who was not Native, was not writing about lived experience,
and relied on stereotypes to convey a story
that left me feeling worse off than when I started.
The second thing that happened to me
when I was in high school, a senior in high school,
some of you are familiar with my origin story.
Everyone has an origin.
I love the stories behind the story.
And my friend, senior year of high school,
she went to a different school nearby
and she told me about a new boy senior year
who was in all of her classes.
And she said, "I think he might be your type,
like, I think you'd wanna meet him."
And we won't really delve into what my type...
Okay, okay. [audience laughing]
A beefy intellectual was my unicorn and still is.
However... [audience laughing]
When I found out that this new guy,
a few weeks later, I find out he did not play football
and he did not,
or he hung out with the hardcore,
we called them stoners.
And I was like, "Yeah, no, no, that's not my type."
So I never met him.
And then a month before graduation,
my friend said, "You're never gonna believe it."
The new boy, there was a huge drug bust,
and it turned out that he was actually
an undercover police officer. [audience groaning]
And yes, and this, dating myself,
which are the only dates now, but however.
So back then, it was even
before the original 21 Jump Street,
so with Johnny Depp.
So it was, like, the idea that
this young-looking law enforcement officer
could pose as a high school student.
It blew my mind.
And then, I always say I was raised on mysteries
and the CBS soap operas.
And so my romantic mind just, like, took a little,
you know, what if we had met?
What if I had met this boy
and what if we liked each other or he needed my help?
[audience laughing]
And then this idea of,
but why would some undercover drug investigation
need the help of an ordinary 18-year-old Ojibwe girl?
Well, let me tell you, [all laughing]
that idea stayed with me a very long time.
I ended up going to Central Michigan University.
I was the first person in my family
to ever go away to college.
My grandma was at my graduation, my nookomis.
And afterwards, I ended up working
for the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe
in Mount Pleasant, Michigan,
which was very near my university.
And I was a tribal employee
with an office in the local public school.
And I would help the Native students
that were in that school
navigate school a little bit better.
So I would help with tutoring.
If a student had any disciplinary action,
I would be a friendly face in that meeting
to let them know that they were not alone.
And I would let their parents know what their rights were.
And I remember, you know, seeing different situations
like a whole group of students goofing off,
but it would be the one Native student
that would get pulled aside for disciplinary action.
And then one of my favorite students
was this really quiet guy,
but it just seemed like every time
he would step a foot out of line,
someone was right there to ride him
and make sure that, you know, that he got in trouble.
And one day, he just finally had enough
and he started to walk to the front door of the school.
And I was walking next to him
and I was saying like, "Steve, like, come on,
"can we just, like, get through the next hour?
Like, let's just get through the next day."
And he was like, "Nope, I've had it."
And the principal met us at that front door
and he held the door open for Steve as he walked out.
And the principal said,
as we're watching this young Ojibwe young man
walk down the sidewalk and head towards the reservation.
And he said, "What a shame; so much potential."
And I wished I had the courage to say in that moment,
"You are literally holding the door open for him.
We had plenty of opportunities."
And it galvanized what I wanted to do with my career,
which was to improve public school education
for Native students and about Native peoples
and communities.
97% of all Native students attend local public schools.
Only 7% attend Bureau of Indian Education-funded schools
and private schools.
So I had this career in Indian education.
And the years went by, I would be like,
"Oh, remember that idea I had to write that book?
Oh, that would be such a good idea."
Well, I wasn't writing, but I was still creating.
I would see different situations
in the different tribal communities
that I was working in, and I would be like,
"Wait, what if it was a federal drug investigation
"on an Indian reservation?
"And what if the drug was something that had a recipe
"that could be tweaked, manipulated?
"What if it was manipulated with something
"that had a cultural component?
"And what if this 18-year-old Ojibwe girl
"was a whiz at chemistry
"and knew about traditional medicines, plants as healing
"and knew her culture and language
"and was connected to everybody and everything?
"She actually would be the ideal confidential informant
for a federal drug investigation on a reservation."
That only took me about 20 years to work that out.
[audience laughing]
I did not go to school to become a novelist,
a fiction writer.
I did not major in anything creative writing.
I think sometimes first generation college students
get this message that you're in college
and that your degree needs to lead to a major
and a job with earning potential.
And so somehow you might get the message
that you don't major in your hobbies.
And I think that's a great disservice.
But along these ways, I remember reading
or listening to an interview
that Billy Joel, singer-songwriter did,
and he talked about how he dreamt in music.
And when he would wake up, he would rush to his piano
and he would play the melodies
and the notes that had come to him in his dreams.
And I remember thinking that was so cool for someone
to be so passionate about something.
And I talked with one of my friends
and I told her about this,
and she said that she dreamt about jingle dress designs.
She dreamt about designs for her regalia.
And I remember thinking that was so cool.
And then I thought about what I dreamt about,
and I guess I thought everybody dreamt in stories,
but then I found out that as I talked to more people,
normal people don't dream about, like, plot development
[audience laughing]
and subplots and cliffhangers and all of these other things.
So I was like, "Hmm, maybe I'm a storyteller."
The other thing too is that I rethought my experiences.
I did not have an MFA.
I did not have classes in creative writing.
I was always good at writing, and every job I've ever had,
in addition to my official job title,
I also wrote grants.
I would pull all-nighters working on grants
because it was the only way my programs would ever grow
was to find, get the funding myself.
And I rethought, and I thought, "Every grant proposal
is a short story in 40 pages or less, plus attachments."
You are writing a compelling narrative
to the grant reviewers about your community,
about the issue that you want to address,
about why you picked that particular approach,
how you involved your community,
how you'll know that you're on track,
what your steps are gonna be if you get off track,
and why your community should be trusted with the funding.
And I was like,
"That's a different writing background than I've ever heard
"from any other novelist,
but it doesn't make my experience any less valid."
In 2009, I was married and I had three kids.
I lived in Sault Ste. Marie.
I worked for my tribe and my sons were in high school,
and my daughter was a preteen.
And I remember having this moment,
and I say maybe it was a midlife crisis.
I was 44, I will say that.
But it was this realization that maybe, best case scenario,
there was an equal amount of sand
in the bottom of the hourglass and in the top.
And the years were going by so quickly.
And if I hadn't accomplished the dreams
that I always said I was going to do,
what was I waiting for?
And I remember distinctly feeling,
"I've always thought about this story,
"about this 18-year-old Ojibwe girl,
and what am I waiting for?"
I gave myself permission
to write the world's worst first draft.
I decided I could live with the failure
of writing a bad draft
and realizing that story had no legs.
I could live with failure easier
than I could live with the regret of never trying,
of something that I always had thought of.
Also, in 2009, my daughter was a preteen
and I told her my idea for the story.
And she goes, "Mom, that sounds even better than Twilight!"
[audience laughing]
And that was high praise from a preteen.
So I was like, "All right, I'm gonna try it."
So I didn't realize when I started
to write this novel that it would take 10 years.
I honestly thought it would take a year or two
and then I would get an agent, I would get published.
By the time my daughter was in high school,
this book would be ready for her.
I did not count on it taking 10 years.
I was only focused on the draft I was working on,
and then I would set it aside for a few weeks.
Then I would read it again with writer's eyes
and I would think about what was I doing well in the story
and what could I improve upon?
And I was brutally honest with myself about that,
like being able to write dialogue.
I realized I did not know how to write dialogue.
So I would read craft books about writing dialogue,
but I would also reread my favorite books
and see how those authors wrote dialogue
and wrote it so well
that you wouldn't even need the dialogue tags
of, like, "he said" or "she said."
Like, they just did it so well,
you knew exactly who was speaking.
So about halfway through my ten-year odyssey
into writing this story of my heart,
one of my sons loved Harry Potter,
and one loved Harry--
one loved Harry Potter, one loved Star Wars.
And I remember thinking that
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
and Harry Potter: The Sorcerer's Stone,
the first movie, they're, like, so similar.
And I thought I discovered something,
and then I realized, like,
no, this has been studied across eons,
across cultures.
But so, you know, that this average, ordinary person,
seemingly, gets this call to adventure.
And in the case of Star Wars: A New Hope
and Harry Potter: Sorcerer's Stone,
it's their uncle that refuses the call for them.
But eventually, they enter this unknown world
and they discover hidden talents,
they make friends, and they also make enemies,
and they're on a quest for something.
And then when they finally face this final
big, bad adversary,
whether or not they're successful
in getting what they thought they wanted,
they are a different person than entered that unknown world.
And when they return to the ordinary world,
they're no longer the same person.
They've been transformed by this journey.
And we see the hero's journey so much
in popular movies and books.
My favorite is Moana,
and I have to admit it's because it's a Disney movie
that has no love interest.
[audience laughing] And yeah, so.
But I thought too, like, we Indigenous people,
we also have our hero stories.
So we have a character called Nanabush or Nanabozho,
and he is on this, like, epic journey.
And he'll encounter Rabbit
and you discover how Rabbit got its floppy ears
or how Porcupine got its quills.
And a lot of times, the stories are at his expense.
So he's kind of a goofball.
But yeah, these are, like, teachings that we have
about this person on this epic journey.
And I remembered distinctly this,
like, five years into my ten-year writing process,
having this eureka moment
where I saw the hero's journey depicted online
as this, like, pizza cut in four slices,
with the primary plot points around it.
And then right after that,
I was, like, browsing for something else
and I saw the Ojibwe medicine wheel.
This one is by Keewana Bay Indian community.
And sometimes the medicine wheel is depicted,
like, tilted on its axis.
So the sections are, like, more diagonal there.
But this one, it was exactly the same
as the hero's journey.
And for some reason, it made me think, "Wait,
I could overlay these."
The medicine wheel, Ojibwe medicine wheel,
it has a lot of cultural teachings.
It encapsulates the four cardinal directions,
the four traditional colors, the four seasons,
the four times of the day, the four cycles of life,
all these different teachings are in that medicine wheel.
And I thought, I could overlay these
and I could use the medicine wheel as a cultural framework
for telling the hero's journey from this ordinary,
18-year-old Ojibwe girl going through this experience.
And that was the day that I realized
my book would get published
because I had never seen a story told in that way.
And it fueled me to, like, keep going,
keep trying to get better at my writing,
trying to do more research to make the story plausible,
you know, to enrich it.
And so after 10 years, I pitched my book on Twitter,
which I no longer recommend. [audience laughing]
Twitter has changed.
But back in the day,
they would have these pitching events,
and it was, like, from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM Eastern on one day.
And mine, the one I participated in was #DVpit,
Diverse Voices pitch.
And you would tweet out the elevator pitch
for your manuscript.
And if a literary agent
or an editor from a publishing house,
if they liked that tweet,
it was considered an invitation to query them.
And so, you know, I pitched.
"When 18-year-old Daunis
"witnesses the murder of a loved one,
"she must use her science geekery
"and knowledge about her Ojibwe culture
to protect her tribal community before she loses anyone else."
I had 60 literary agents like that.
I had 20 editors from publishing houses like that.
My tweet was not the standout of the day.
Like, there were other pitches that did much, much better.
So a lot of times, we hear the term "Hurry up and wait,"
and my 36-year path to publication
is more of a very long buildup, 36 years.
And waiting until that roller coaster car gets to the top
of that very first peak.
And you know, if you've been on a rollercoaster,
I haven't been in a while,
my stomach just cannot handle it anymore.
But you hear that, like, clink, clink, clink
and then it takes off.
That is my publishing experience.
So I had an agent within two weeks of querying,
and my manuscript went out on submission
in the fall of 2019.
And within two weeks, we had a 12-bidder auction
and I sold the publishing rights for over a million dollars.
[audience applauding] Thank you.
Thank you, yes.
And I was a nobody in the publishing world.
I had not graduated from,
you know, a prestigious master of fine arts program
in creative writing.
I hadn't gone to, like, you know, notable retreats
or you know, writing programs or workshops.
I was just the person that would get up a half hour
before my kids to write on the family computer
before the kids got up and my day took off.
Two weeks after I sold the publishing rights,
I sold the film rights to the Obamas
in another huge deal, for Netflix.
[audience applauding]
Thank you.
And I'm like, but wait, there's more.
So Reese Witherspoon picked my book
for her young adult book club.
And then a few days before my book came out,
Robin Roberts interviewed me on Good Morning America.
And it was all virtual.
And Jennifer Garner was also in the virtual green room
because she was advertising her movie Yes Day.
Oh, my God, 7:00 in the morning,
perfect skin, no need for makeup or hair.
I was like, "Huh!"
But Robin Roberts, like,
I don't know if she dressed specifically
to match the graphics of my novel,
but she was incredible.
My book debuted at number one
on the New York Times bestseller list.
[audience applauding] Thank you, thank you.
And it's made the list 31 times, not all consecutively,
and it's won some incredible awards.
And you know, the Printz Award
for Excellence in Young Adult Literature
and the Morris Award for young adult debut novel.
One of my favorites is Time magazine
named it number 100
in the 100 Best Young Adult Books of all time.
And when I blasted that on my social media,
one of my friends messaged me and was like,
"Oh, congratulations, I love your book.
"I think it should be higher
than number 100 though, you know?"
[audience laughing]
And I said, "Well, the list is in chronological order.
"It starts with Little Women by Louisa May Alcott,
and it ends with Firekeeper's Daughter."
And at the time, my book was only out for two months,
so I was like, "I'm pretty good being number 100."
And I have since received 22 foreign rights deals.
So Firekeeper's Daughter is being translated
and published across the world for people and...
Thank you. [audience applauding]
Now, what I think about that is,
you know, James Joyce wrote that,
"In the particular, we find the universal."
And that a story about an ordinary
18-year-old Ojibwe girl in her tribal community,
thrust into a situation she didn't ask for,
but figures out how to navigate, that it could resonate
with readers from other countries,
other racial backgrounds.
My target audience is young adult,
but so many of my readers are adult.
It's just amazing the power that a story has
to connect us with our humanity
and with lives very different than our own.
So I love connecting with readers.
And, okay, so I have my second book
that came out in May,
and I remember when I was working with my agent,
and we had been working on a revision
of Firekeeper's Daughter over the summer of 2019
before we were gonna go out on submission in the fall.
And she said, you know, "We want a two book deal.
So what other books, what other ideas do you have?"
And I was like, "I literally have nothing.
"It's been this one story since I was 18 years old.
I don't know if I have anything else."
But I was living in Washington, D.C. at the time
and I was out for a walk one Sunday,
and all of a sudden, this character's voice
popped into my head, and she said,
"I stole everything they think I did
and even stuff they don't know about yet."
And I thought, "Who is this person?"
And so I was walking in this other neighborhood,
and if you're familiar with Washington, D.C.
or Alexandria, it was Cheesetique.
It's this, like, restaurant, bar, and imported cheese deli.
I'm all about cheese.
And so I ran into that nearest business
and I ran up to the bar and I, 'cause on my Sunday walk,
I just had a credit card and my phone,
and I said, "I need a piece of paper,
a pen, and a chardonnay." [audience laughing]
And I wrote the whole afternoon, this stream of consciousness
of this 16-year-old girl sitting in a police station,
waiting for her parents to come pick her up.
And she's thinking, "How did it come to this?"
And that's when I knew that I really felt like a writer.
I felt like I could trust that when I'm ready,
the ideas will come.
And I had this idea,
and if I pitched Firekeeper's Daughter
as Indigenous Nancy Drew meets 21 Jump Street,
I pitched Warrior Girl Unearthed
as Indigenous Lara Croft.
But instead of raiding tombs,
she's raiding museums and private collections
to retrieve stolen ancestors and sacred items
that do not belong in museums.
[audience applauding]
For me, storytelling is a way to talk about the issues
that I care about,
the issues that most students are never gonna hear about
in their curriculum.
And it's a way that I can reach more people in the power
of a book than I ever could working at the federal level,
at the U.S. Department of Education in my dream job.
So I am excited to hear your questions
and encourage you,
whenever we hear a land acknowledgement,
I challenge you to turn that into a call for action.
[audience applauding] Thank you.
The easiest thing you can do
is to read a book by an Indigenous author,
mine or anybody else's; read it.
And if you liked it, it costs you nothing to rate it,
review it online, and recommend it to a friend.
These things are gold to Indigenous authors who,
man, we're just trying to show our publishers
that there is a market for our stories.
So miigwech, thank you so much.
I really am a firekeeper's daughter.
My dad is a firekeeper in our community,
and this is me with my dad as a baby.
And then the day that my book launched...
So everything at the time,
it was a year into COVID and a year into the pandemic.
And all of my official book launch events were virtual.
And I was like, "Wait, I can launch my book
in my tribal community on the day that it comes out."
And so yeah, my parents were there with me.
And I'm just so fortunate that my community
has embraced this story.
And the best thing that I hear is when
a grandparent, a parent,
and a teen say that they read my story together,
or a teacher says that a reluctant reader
could not wait to finish my book
and was the most eager to talk about it in class.
And one time, I was doing an event
at Kalamazoo Valley Community College, and this elderly man
was in the signing line, and I'm signing his book to him.
And then as he's walking away,
he said, "You know, this is the first book
I've ever read since high school."
And I was like, "What, what?"
And I wanted to ask him more about it,
but the signing line was there.
So never underestimate the power of a story
to connect you to people
that you maybe started out knowing nothing about.
But through reading, we find our humanity,
we connect with our empathy.
That is the power of story.
And in these days,
that seems to be the most fearful aspect of all.
I encourage you to be brave,
read freely, and support those who speak out
and want all children to have the right to read.
Miigwech. [audience applauding]