Steve chats with Allison Waukau, Native Community Liaison at Hennepin County Library, about her work connecting the library with the Native community, how libraries can better hire and retain Native staff, how publishing is (slowly) improving at telling authentic Native stories, and the importance of land acknowledgements.
When Allison Waukau originated the Native American liaison position at Hennepin County Library in June 2018, the role was to be grant-funded for 18 months. It has just been made permanent, thanks largely to her ongoing initiatives supporting the library’s Native community.
Allison appears on this episode of the Native Lights podcast about raising Native representation on the shelves and behind the scenes, making libraries more welcoming to Native community members.
In this 2022 American Library Association Youth Media Award American Indian Youth Literature Middle-Grade Honor Book, Ella Cara Deloria loved to listen to her family tell stories in the Dakota language. She recorded many American Indian peoples’ stories and languages and shared them with everyone. She helped protect her people’s language for future generations. She also wrote stories of her own.
The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) human-rights crisis disproportionately affects Indigenous peoples in Canada and the United States, notably those in the FNMI (First Nations, Métis, Inuit) and Native American communities. A corresponding mass movement in the US and Canada works to raise awareness of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG) through organized marches; the building of databases; local community, city council, and tribal council meetings; and domestic violence trainings for police.
Opposition to Line 3, a proposed pipeline expansion to bring nearly a million barrels of tar sands per day from Alberta, Canada to Superior, Wisconsin.
Thomas Barlow Walker (February 1, 1840 – July 28, 1928) was an American business magnate who acquired lumber in Minnesota and California and became an art collector, and he founded the Minneapolis Public Library.
LANDBACK is a movement that has existed for generations with a long legacy of organizing and sacrifice to get Indigenous Lands back into Indigenous hands.
