Venito Garcia Library Summer Reading Program 2021
While school might be out for summer, public libraries have been busy leading summer reading programs across the country. It has been an exciting summer here at Labriola, in part due to our collaboration with the Venito Garcia Library on the Tohono O’odham Nation. The Venito Garcia Library staff dedicated themselves to creating a virtual summer reading program that could not only get kids reading, but give the kids tangible ways to hold on to this experience that will hopefully benefit themselves, their family and community, and the land.
Venito Garcia Librarian Althea Salvicio mentioned that the 2021 summer national theme for public libraries was “Tails and Tales.” While she acknowledges that animal books are great, the Venito Garcia Library felt it was of more importance to center Indigenous authors. Althea made the excellent point that “studies have shown that seeing characters in books that look and act like people from one’s own community builds a child’s self-esteem in positive ways.” By sharing Native-authored books, this shows the youth that “Indigenous people like them are publishing stories that come from their own communities—something the kids could do too.” Althea also emphasized the importance of having O’odham representation for the youth in our community:”[h]aving adults connect the Native-authored stories we were sharing to O’odham culture was important to us because there are so few children’s books written by O’odham people.There are many similarities among Indigenous people, but it was important to us to show the kids that there are cultural differences that make O’odham people special too,” which is in part why Althea partnered with the ASU Library’s Labriola National American Indian Data Center and the Tohono O'odham Community College Library.
The Venito Garcia Library knew that Alex Soto (Tohono O’odham), Director of the Labriola Center, was open to collaborate, and their library staff “were excited to hear that Alex had O’odham staff that were willing to give us some of their time.” Lourdes (Hia Ced O’odham) and myself, Elizabeth (Tohono O’odham), were equally as excited to be able to share this time and share stories with children from our community. Labriola works within the university, and a lot of our work is geared towards university students and Indigenous adults, so it was a light in our lives to take this opportunity to interact with kids from our community. Labriola participated in three reading sessions for grades 1-5, two of which were coupled with Clifford Pablo and Joyce Miguel with Tohono O’odham Community College Farm Extension and from HOPP (Healthy O’odham Promotion Program). Lourdes and I took on this opportunity to create fun and interactive reading sessions for the youth,
playing games such as “O’odham Says” and “iSpy.” In our sessions it was important for us to spotlight Indigenous authored books, however it was also to ensure that the books we were sharing were complementary to the other presenters, interactive for the kids, and connected to O’odham him:dag (O’odham word meaning way of life).
In addition to being mindful of the stories we were sharing with the kids, there is cultural and traditional protocol that always needs to be considered when working in the library. This allowed us to sort through our Indigenous authored children's books in our Open Stacks collection and protect Indigneous knowledge. For example, there was a Diné book we wanted to share with the kids, however the story is reserved for the winter season. We were able to hold the book and possibly place it in Open Stacks when the season is right.
-Elizabeth Quiroga, Labriola Student Archivist/Librarian