READ ACROSS AMERICA

In 2021 we challenged ourselves to try and make reading connections to each of the 50 states, AND to as many native territories as we could, before the end of the school year.

This slideshow explains the different ways to make a connection, or "collect", a state or territory that we then marked up on our master map in the Library. Students were welcome to have a copy of the map for themselves, and to play in various ways - challenging themselves to plot a route across the continent, to "collect" all the states in a region, or perhaps as many native territories as possible. It also shows how we developed maps to show BOTH states and the lands that are under native control, along with the traditional lands of Indigenous nations. There are over 500 federally recognized tribes, and we have not illustrated each one, but as much as scale permits, we have tried to include all the areas of land actually under native governance.

We are grateful to the AEF for funding to enrich our collection with updated materials on the states, tribal nations and books with indigenous protagonists and by indigenous authors.

This video shows the loss of native land to the federal government though 19th and 20th centuries, with modern states boundaries shown for reference. The final map corresponds quite well to our finished product as well.