Deborah Hayes: Good afternoon. Audience: Good afternoon. Deborah Hayes: I am Deborah Hayes, and on behalf of Dr. Billington, the Librarian of Congress, the Chief Operating Officer, Jo Ann Jenkins, and our partners and cosponsors, the Law Library and the Center for the Book, it is my extreme pleasure to welcome each of you to our first event in celebration of Native American Heritage Month. What started at the turn of the century as an effort to gain a day of recognition for the significant contributions Native Americans made to the establishment and the growth of the United States has resulted in an entire month being designated for that purpose. In 1990, then President George H.W. Bush approved a joint resolution designating November 1990 as National American Indian Heritage Month. Similar proclamations have been issued since then. In the President's proclamation issued for this year's observance, he indicates that American Indians and Alaska Natives continue to shape our nation by preserving the heritage of their ancestors which has helped others to gain a deeper understanding of the vibrant and ancient customs of the Native American community. These factors have contributed to the richness of the diversity that is our country's strength. Ladies and gentlemen, now it is my honor to introduce Dr. James H. Billington, the 13th Librarian of Congress, who will introduce our distinguished presenter. Please join me in a round of applause for Dr. Billington. [applause] James Billington: Thank you very much, and it really is a great pleasure to welcome you all to this very distinguished opening of a celebration this month, Native American Heritage Month. We will host events that honor Native Americans, as Deborah has said, toward their contributions to our nation, and as America's major repository of recorded knowledge and the diverse creativity of the American people, the Library has amassed collections that are very rich in the resources that tell the Native American story. The first Bible ever printed in America was printed in the Algonquin language in 1663, of which we have a copy. It's a quite interesting story because they had to invent a written equivalent of an orally spoken language, and they had to invent a font to print it, so it was, in a way, the first act of real publishing of that rather fundamental book in our history, culture. First editions of 19th century Indian portfolios is McKenney and Hall's History of the Indian Tribes of North America, George Catlin's North American Indian Portfolio, 1730, 13 peace treaties signed by the delegates of eastern tribes and representatives of New Hampshire and Massachusetts. It's a very long list here. We have a very industrious staff, as you know, and very, very capable. But I have to read some of these things because I think they are fascinating. Father Pierre John De Smet's 1851 manuscript and map illustrating the tribal lands in the American West as well as extensive map holdings of Indian lands and reservation crucial in many modern Native American claims in legal cases. We have Thomas Edison's film, the only copy of the earliest films ever made in America, probably in the world, although there's a big national controversy with the French over Pathey's [spelled phonetically] or Edison. But included in that is films of Sioux and Hopi ceremonial dances recorded at the 1893 World Columbian Exposition, the first motion pictures ever anywhere to feature Native Americans. Rare collection of legal materials comprising constitutions, codes, acts published in the languages of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Creek nations. Edward S. Curtis' collection which has some 2500 turned to the 20th century photographs documenting the cultures of more than 80 tribes west of the Mississippi. 1500 hours of Native America field recordings, the largest collection of such one-of-a-kind materials anywhere, including the very first such recordings, wax cylinders containing songs and stories by the Pasamaquati band recorded 1890 in Calais, Maine. And continuously through 1820, this, this collection was built up. Countless bibliographies, catalogs, guides, and microform collections about Native Americans are in the Library's main reading room. I just come from a meeting of the American -- Center of American Folklife, which is a part of Library of Congress in which a new member just appointed by the, by the White House is himself a Native American and he's -- he spoke very interestingly about additional things that I could have mentioned, such things as cylinder recordings of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce recorded in Washington in 1897, 1900, as well as a good many recordings made on the White Earth Reservation where our distinguished speaker and her parents are enrolled. So there's a -- and I just mention one thing that's very personal, because one of things that we have done here at the Library is our digital presence in the American Memory Collection, and part of the inspiration for that was when I first became Librarian just 20 years ago I went to ten different sites around the country, not just me but there's a whole managing and planning committee, many of whose members are still with us. And I was giving a routine talk to the Great Plains Library Association, and I was using this metaphor, you know, librarians are the gatekeepers to knowledge and so forth and so on. So at the end of this particular talk this man came up to me and he said, you know, he said, that was very interesting and all this talk about books and he said, it's wonderful, and we read them. And he said, you know, all the things that you described librarians as doing were actually done here long before these Europeans came with all these languages and all these books and things. And he said, that's fine, we like them now, but the equivalent of a librarian in those days was the elder of a tribe that kept in his head and shared very generously with everybody, the very old and the very young, the stories, the history which was both the history, the literature and the music of a primarily oral culture. And he said, you know, we didn't call him the gatekeeper, we called him the dream keeper. I think that's one of the most beautiful statements. That just haunted me all the time I've been here, and I think just as libraries are the sort of keepers of the American dream, that whatever the problems of today, tomorrow can always be a little better than yesterday. And that somehow memory, learning, transmission of stories, which is the way we begin our learning anywhere, and if we don't forget about the stories, and if we enlarge the range of the stories we're able to tell, and maybe the ways of telling them so that these oral traditions can come back live again. I say from being on the American Folklife Board, which I think will make some increased efforts to see that this is not just a month but a -- something which becomes an important part of the American, the greater, broader American memory and learning as well as, of course, for the Native Americans themselves. Now, we're honored today to welcome to kick this off, Dr. Roy, the President of the American Library Association and a member of the Minnesota Chippewa tribe. She's a perfect blend of leadership in the library community, which does preserve everything, including almost an embodiment of the American dream, and the Native American community. She's an outstanding leader in the library profession, professor at the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin. You know, a lot of great universities have done away with their library schools. It's great that as big and dynamic a place as the University of Texas has this School of Information. And Dr. Roy's professional work has centered on developing and promoting library services and cultural heritage initiatives with and for indigenous populations. She founded and directs "If I Can Read, I Can Do Anything," that's kind of the American dream a little bit, too, a national reading club for Native American children. And "Honoring Generations," a graduate scholarship program for indigenous students that is funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, our sister institution here in Washington. She earned a Master's Degree in Library Science from the University of Arizona, worked as a reference librarian at the Yuma City County Public Library. While pursuing her doctoral studies and her degree at the University of Illinois she worked in the Library Research Center. She joined the faculty at the University of Texas in 1987 and teaches in both the School of Information and the Center for Women's and Gender Studies. She's an energetic and optimistic person full of dreams, projects, full of all kinds of energy and idealism of the kind you can't get enough of, not just in this profession but in our country generally. So we're very privileged to have her here. We will learn about several of her dreams and projects today, and we're very, very grateful for the prospect of welcoming her as a leader in our profession. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Roy. [applause] Loriene Roy: So I want everyone to say "Booshu." Audience: Booshu. Loriene Roy: You've just said hello, you've made my language live again. [laughter] I'm glad to be here today. I'm a Anishinabe Ojibwe Indian. If you say Ojibwe like that, it sounds pretty much like Chippewa, so you know all of our people. I'm enrolled -- a member on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota and they say there are more White Earthers who are -- Native people who are writers than any other tribe, so we're also known for the politicians. American Indian Movement came from White Earth, and a lot of bossy women -- [laughter] -- are also from White Earth. I just -- I get to write a column once a month in "American Libraries," and this last month's column was called, I think it was "Circle of Learning." And I said something about one of the best things I have to experience this year are seeing the faces of former students in the audience. Leslie Long is here today, a former student who, as a volunteer, went to Washington State to work with the archives for the Lumi people and spent a summer, was it, Leslie? So that's one of the great treasures is looking out and seeing faces. And you look just the same. [laughter] Actually, when you start reading off where I went to school I just keep saying people are just adding up the numbers and figuring out how old I am. [laughter] So this is -- we're going to talk about some work we're doing as a service opportunity for our students and for tribal people and throw in a few other things. But I just want to start out, too, with thanking the Library of Congress for all that you do for librarians. We don't always hear all that staff is doing, and we know that you are it, you are it with the collections and with all the services you provide, so thank you very much. One of the good news we have, if you look on ALA.org today there should be a press release announcing the President's program speaker for the ALA midwinter meeting, and Lynn Alstadt's on the programming committee, and she helped bring that about. And I brought one of the books by that speaker whom I have heard has been a wonderful speaker for your National Book Festival, so Kareem Abdul-Jabbar will be the speaker for midwinter. And I picked him for several reasons. First of all, like a lot of Indian people, I'm a huge basketball fan. [laughter] I am always in a better mood from November to mid March. [laughter] And because, if you know, every time someone says University of Texas at Austin, I just have to -- [laughter] You know, I just have to control the hands, Hook 'Em Horns comes up automatically. And so I got to -- I watched on TV last night with Kevin Durant's inaugural play. He hasn't won a game yet with the Sonics, but he's on his way to being a great basketball player, we know, and so that's the announcement. I also want to acknowledge Barbara Folensbee-Moore, who is the President of your D.C. Library Association. If you don't know -- you want to raise your hand, Barbara. So we had dinner last night. [applause] Thank you for coming. And so we met with some good colleagues of mine with the Indigenous Languages Institute and had great conversation. And Barbara had to leave, and then we ended up staying an hour longer and talking about other ways we could work. So let's talk about kids, Native kids especially. One reason that Kareem was chosen, not just because I love basketball but he spent a winter coaching high school basketball with the White Mountain Apache School and wrote a book about that and that's where I started hearing about him as an author. So about ten years ago maybe it's from, let's see, '98, so a year before, I believe, Sarah Long was elected ALA President-Elect, and I met her and hosted her at a reception, and then she got elected and sent an e-mail out to a lot of people just saying, "I'm elected. Who do I do now?" And I said, "Remember we talked about tribal schools and how they get kind of left out of everything that we get to do for fun in our field, that is, going to conferences, finding out about authors, picking up that little bookmark at an exhibit?" And I said, "Could we do something kind of demonstrates commitment to serving children through their tribal school libraries?" And I went to her budget hearing. She called me up after she was elected, about six months later. She said, "Do that thing, do that whatever you said you could do." And I said, "Well, we'll figure out something." And I went to her budget hearing, and I saw a line on the budget said $10,000 for literacy, and I said, sure would like that money. [laughter] And she said, "You can have half of it," and I was real happy. And we spent all but eight cents in the next -- [laughter] And we didn't even know how close we were. The last day of adding up the receipts and I said, "Eight cents, go run and buy eight one-cent stamps." [laughter] So we're going to talk about this project. And I love starting with this picture because the picture is Marti Lindsey, she was the school librarian on the Rock Point Community School on the Arizona side of the Navajo Reservation, and she's the person who gave the project its title. All I knew is what public libraries did for summer reading programs. I said, let's do something like that. We're not going to test kids. Kids get tested all the time, especially Native kids tested for their reading. Excelled Reader was taking off and kids love that competition. But I said, kids need to also enjoy reading for life. Families do, too. And she said, "Whenever kids come to the library, and they're getting ready to leave," she says, "I always tell them, if you can read you can do anything." And at first I wanted a real Native kind of, you know, title. Dr. Billington mentioned dreams and you also know Anishinabe people for our dream catchers. I said, "Let's call it Dream Catcher," but then we'd have to explain it all the time. Let's call it like they do in Auteroa, New Zealand, something about a stone, let's call it Green Stone or something like that. Well, it turns out kids understand what this means. So I got warmed up to it over time. But Marti is -- with one of our students, Marti went on to Red Mesa High School, and Marti is finishing a doctorate at the University of Arizona's Library Program. So let's find out what we're doing. Well, there are lots of schools that serve Native kids, kids have options of going to their schools on tribal lands, and now in addition to federally funded schools there are -- charter school movement is big on Native and Indian country, so you're talking about 50,000 kids, at least, who are living on tribal homelands, and one of the things that we are still challenged by is how to reach out to kids who are in urban settings. So, you know, two-thirds of Native people live in urban settings, including people like me who live in places like Austin, Texas. This is -- I hear that you have a speaker who is going to talk about hoop dancing, and this is a piece of art by Dan Wildcat showing the hoop dancer in the world. So what are we trying to do? We're tying to assist tribal communities in increasing the literacy skills but also doing it in a way that's respectful of and encouraging Native culture. We've always wanted to do something that also involved Native language. This is a little bit of a dated map but it shows some of our schools. We have a school up in Alaska, now and our new school this year is White Mountain Apache School. Actually, it just happens to be the school where Kareem coached that basketball team. We add about a school a year now. We went from one school to like seven and then to 15, and it's all a volunteer project. So encouraging kids to read at Marti's school when we started at one of the first schools at Rock Point, she got the football coach involved, the kids -- football players all took reading breaks, for example, and we do a lot of events with the schools. October is a big month. The kids love scary stories. You meet a Native kid, you don't know what to say, just say, "Do you like ghost stories?" And they are hooked on you, they love you. [laughter] I only tell real ghost stories, true ones that really happen so... Increasing the use of library materials. The library as the center of the campus, for example. Seeing what we could do with reading in families. We piloted the project at the Laguna Elementary School in New Mexico and had a family nights, family reading nights, and some of the other sites do family reading nights, talking about reading. This year we're planning an event we'll talk about. And then by flexible reading choices, that means, you know, giving kids some options of what they could read. People ask me sometimes is Harry Potter, you know, on tribal lands? I said, any book that a child would enjoy, a Native child would enjoy, especially scary stories. So we started with some reading themes, and we found out scary stories were it so we kind of stick with scary stories. [laughter] We have material for the kids. I pick up things from conferences. I had breakfast with someone from Reading is FUNdamental. They're shipping material that we can distribute to kids. We have tried reading logs. We have tried chat rooms with schools, schools getting online and telling scary stories together, and I actually had to close the drapes -- or the blinds in my office, I was really scared so -- [laughter] We don't do the reading tests, as I said. We look at providing a book flood. Promoting reading, we need things that kids would read, and for each school involved with the project we promise we will deliver over time 1,000 books. And we have been able to ship over $100,000 in new books to the schools. We accept new books except we'll take copies of More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, any condition. That's the hot thing. [laughter] We have, we have a web site. And what are we seeing? What's happening as a result of working with tribal schools, now about 28 of them over the last eight years. We're seeing that the librarians are involved in more continuing education. Some of our librarians have gone to get public library certification in New Mexico, gone on to programs, working on doctorates. The schools are getting additional funding, especially for the library. We saw in a lot of cases library budgets actually were zero for a year. Additional partners want to participate and help with the project. Again, more money for schools. We're getting a lot of pieces of publicity. Next year I get to return to my good life. This year I'm, you know, doing a little bit of [unintelligible] stuff once in a while. And people have warned me they said, you know, people who serve as the ALA President, they have trouble, they have trouble the next year. And I just wonder, you know, what kind of trouble happens, you know. [laughter] But I'm fortunate that, you know, we have a lot of plans for next year and, again, returning to the schools. There have been some awards at U.T. Austin. We received the first -- U.T.'s only Humanitarian Award. They gave it to us, I think, six years ago, and then I was on the panel to select the next one, and we selected someone. They didn't get it, so we're it for right now. We see the schools attentive to reading. There's one school we work with, and they're just -- they're just opening their first library as a separate building, and the kids were not allowed to check out books. I visited in 2000, and this is kind of both a sad story and an exciting story. And they did have a master degree librarian. They were not a tribal member but she had, you know, gone to a good program. Actually to U.T. Austin, I hadn't met her. But -- and the library was full of books, full of books, and I wondered how we could help. And she said, well -- I said, and they're not only full of books, they're in terrific condition. And she said, I don't circulate books. And we listened. She said because the Indian kids will take them home, and they will get dirty. And she said, but they're just too dirty to take the books home, and she was talking about the kids. And I listened and I just thought, you know, I could say a lot of things right now. [laughter] But I pulled out -- we had 52 books that we delivered, donated to us, and I said, look we have a bookplate, and you can tell the kids if they find this book they can take it home. They have to go home. We won't get donations if they find out we won't let kids have the books. And the people hosting me, we drove in the car about a couple of miles before we said anything and they said, I'm sorry. And I said no, no, the good news is we got to work with those -- that school because there's a bunch of kids, 180 kids who have never been able to check out a book before. And that librarian left, and one of the -- within a couple months, and I'm sure she's doing good work elsewhere. [laughter] But someone -- a school teacher was assigned librarian, and the first thing they did was open the doors for the library, and the Ann Curry Library opens about now. Ann Curry has donated a lot of the support. But that school, you know, now those kids, there's a book in every backpack. You might here of Battle of the Books competitions in different states, and that school -- they were wondering, they said, you know, how will the Native kids respond to competing with other kids and knowing details about books. I said, well, see if anyone is willing to do it. The first year two did, two or six, and they got awards. The next year like everybody wanted to do it. [laughter] So they go -- it's fun to go to that school. Sacaton Elementary for the first year in the project they said, let's see what happens with our reading scores. And they saw an increase where the scores had been relatively stable. But again, we didn't design this as a research project. This is a citizen engagement or service learning project. Funding. ALA gave us that $5,000 to start. Four Directions was a federal grant through the U.S. Department of Education. One of the first technology challenge grants when Al Gore was Vice President. And they gave the equivalent of $30,000, really in support for a student to work on the project for a year and a half. Tocker Foundation of Texas gave us some funding. School of Information gave some funding, and we get some other money. So sometimes people ask us where do you get money from. How is this all organized? Well, I'm kind of like senior, only, project director, I guess for life. [laughter] We work with the librarians on site. We have a board, good people. I hate telling people no, and so if I can't I just go to the board, and I say, will you tell me no so I can tell them know, you know. [laughter] And then we try to set up liaisons to the schools when we can. We have somebody usually on salary. This time it's a -- this semester it's a student from the Pueblo of Laguna, Janice Kowemy, and she's actually paying to work on the project as an independent study. And then we have -- we're ramping up our volunteers again. We do conferences and that sort of thing to promote -- I like to use this slide because that child has a hot -- our hot incentive, and that's a visor with a dinosaur hanging off of it. And I forgot to put -- I had it in the car, and I forgot to put it in the suitcase. And they're just really the popular thing for the little guys. And I visited Rock Point School and had enough visors with me for the second graders and gave them out, but you have to put them together a little bit. The kids know how to do it. Adults have trouble. [laughter] And so these little dinosaurs hang off from the visors. And we went for lunch and I noticed, I was sitting in the cafeteria, and the kids heads were going up and down. And I was looking, and the kids had franks and beans for lunch, and I realized they were trying to put their visors in their food. [laughter] And I said, "What you guys doing?" And they said, "We're feeding our dinosaurs." [laughter] And I ran over, I said, "Look, their stomachs are full, we just fed them. There's no -- " [laughter] So it's fun to work with the kids. What do we do if we get money? Sometimes the schools actually have a request for books. When we get donations of new books we send a list out. Some of the schools say send us anything. We have membership cards but now they're largely virtual, and, you know, it's hard to get people to donate money for postage, but that's one of the things we like to use money for. And sometimes we do site visits. This year -- last year, this year and next year I can't give honoraria to U.T. Austin. It goes to the ALA-APA, but when I give talks, the honoraria goes to travel. And you can get a graduate student to do about anything for you for a year if you promise him an airplane ticket somewhere. [laughter] We do work on partners, people who will connect with the school, people who sponsor a school. Santa Clara Day School has a sponsor, and their library is well managed, and they have a terrific librarian. And I said, "How would you like to work with us?" And they said, "You know, we get flooded every spring." I said, "You know, what does this mean?" They said, "Water comes in the library. If you notice, there is about this gap of four inches where we don't put things on the floor." So we found two foundations in Austin that paid for the relandscaping, you know, of the building. And then their librarian said now we want to go to ALA. So we paid for her two students to go to ALA, and then I said we have got to -- you know, we got to rotate that a little bit. [laughter] Sometimes people donate incentives. We just got 4,000 wristbands from the Lance Armstrong Foundation and -- the original wristband. And those are hot. People might say, you know, we'd like to work with a new school. Sometimes people give us content for web site or some great ideas. What would we like to do? We still would like to do this culture responsive reading manual. How to promote Native material, you know, in a cultural, Native cultural way. You know, we all have protocol, and I told you where I was from, but if I was in Minnesota, I'd also tell you my father was Mississippi Band, my mother is Pembina Band, and I'd also tell you I was Muckwa, or Bear Clan, because there's a -- there are ways you introduce yourself. Muckwas Bear Clan, we're not the traditional leaders. They were the mediators because the two leader clans were Crane and Loon, and they were noisy and didn't always listen to other people, like to hear themselves, and sometimes Bear Clan had to go figure it out. And so Bear Clan typically were justices of the peace, police officers and medicine people. People ask us all the time, what would you recommend that people read? And typically non- Native schools will ask us. Well, we send them to Oyate, the web site, and say anything they recommend we recommend. Some collaborative writing, I'd style like to do a book on scary stories from the "res". And the other phenomenon on reservations are those dogs, the "res" dogs, and the kids always have -- I meet dogs on every visit. Dogs are wonderful. Translation, how can we encourage Native language education through translation series. We did start a storytelling video series with visiting storytellers. We have had contests. The kids love seeing celebrities, they're version of celebrities, authors, storytellers. And working with more library schools. So we have a lot of things we would like to do in the future. One of the things we're doing this year, sometimes when you -- someone serves as the ALA President, y'all should think about serving as ALA President. There are good days and a lot of -- a lot of good days, and occasionally this moment you say, "Why am I doing this?" [laughter] But this is something we're planning now. And we did a little test two years ago, one of my students tested this. The largest powwow in the U.S. is called Gathering of Nations, so we're doing sort of a reading powwow during National Library Week, Gathering of Readers. The National Library Week theme was picked to coincide or to support this called Join the Circle of Knowledge at your library, and this map shows little dots of the four schools that helped us test this Gathering of Readers. We had two schools in the states, one in Zambia and one in Auteroa, or New Zealand. And we're inviting indigenous authors to participate by sharing a little information about their works. You'll see Cynthia Leitich Smith, who was here for the National Book Festival, Constance Brissenden and her partner, Larry Loyie. Larry is the author, he's Cree from Canada, and he was honored last year at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto. He wrote the first book on HIV/AIDS for indigenous youth. For teens, we like to make sure that teens find their place in what we're doing, and we have -- we're going to feature some indigenous authors and illustrators of graphic novels, including Chad Solomon's work, Rabbit and Bear Paws, which is a comic strip you can get for free online. And this is actually Anishinabe culture. You might think that Rabbit and Bear Paws are not related, but they're brothers, and the big one is the little brother, actually. [laughter] And so there's a lot of, if you know trickster stories, there's a lot of that element through the, through the comics. And Chad says that -- he does a contest for kids every once in a while, and I said, can you have a contest during National Library Week, so we're working with him on that. Chickaloon Village up in Alaska is one of our reading project schools, and they produce graphic novels using their traditional stories. They're in English with a traditional name and a closure and greeting, and Patricia Wade is on the board of the, of the school from Chickaloon and her son is the illustrator, she writes the books. So we'll feature some of their work. What we're doing during this Gathering of Readers, inviting 50 to 100 schools that serve indigenous kids around the world to share a little bit about what they do in the schools to promote reading and culture, give us what their dream for their library is, share some image that they would choose, we'll feature it on the web site and feature authors, fun things for the kids, send the kids incentives, and for the schools in the U.S., Reading is FUNdamental is sending shipments of books. These are kids at Sacatoon Elementary fooling around with a digital camera. [laughter] And that's one school where we're allowed to use images of the kids, so we like it. And if you are a brunette, you can walk into those schools, and everyone is a brunette. It's like one of the few times in your life. [laughter] You know. So that's some of the stuff we're doing. We're having fun with it. We'll continue next year adding more schools. We have these big ideas of every school have a liaison, every school will be supported by a library school program, that we will be able to connect schools around the world, a school in South Africa, Pretoria, wants to enter into e-mail correspondence with 7th graders at one of the other schools. We will leave it up to them, provide them with connections. And I think we still have time for questions. So and Maguich, Maguich [spelled phonetically] says thank you. I want to say thank you also, the student who is working with me now is Alex Hershey, ALA pays her to be my personal assistant, which is terrific, and she was an intern here during the summer. And she remembered doing her poster, and she said, "Tell Dr. Billington, 'Hi.'" She said, "He spent," she said, "he spent so much time at each student's poster." She said, "I think he talked to me 20 minutes." [laughter] She felt very privileged. And so that's just another way that Library of Congress really supports, in this case, library education. And Alex is terrific. And I bring her chocolate, that's about it. [laughter] I bought her jalapeno chocolate yesterday, I think. [applause] Robert Newland, do you have a question? [laughter] Male Speaker: [inaudible] Loriene Roy: [laughter] Robert Newland: How did you know that? Loriene, could you talk a little bit about your work and your interest in recruiting people of color to the library profession. Loriene Roy: Wow, I planted that man in the audience. [laughter] This is a concern of a lot of people. I'm very fortunate to be connected with some of the efforts that have really been successful. This year, if you know, ALA's Spectrum initiative, the tenth anniversary of Spectrum. Before Spectrum, ALA had what was called a diversity intern, one a year. Someone who was already graduated would go to ALA, spend a year, rotating through offices, and then this person would quite often disappear somewhere. And so Spectrum has now supported through scholarship over 400 students. It would have taken ALA 400 years to, to contact and support that many students. And those are students from underrepresented communities. IMLS funded grants, the Laura Bush Librarians for the 21st Century grants. In terms of Native students, recruiting Native students, there are three major programs, but Native students can go anywhere. University of British Columbia up in Canada has a First Nation's Concentration, and University of Arizona has Knowledge River. I'm back on the board of Knowledge River. And then our program "Honoring Generations," each providing something different but some incentive, some way to connect with students. Our program we have -- we had initial plans to have six students. Our seventh just started, and we have another scholarship. I remember Sandy Littletree came, she's Navajo and Shoshone, she came to my office. She said, "I just saw a sign downstairs that said start making your international connections." She said, "I looked there and I said, done that." You know, because we connect with Maori librarians in New Zealand and Aboriginal librarians in Canada and also Australia, and Sandy has been to New Zealand and Canada. So supporting these Native librarians to have these connections for life, I said, took me till I was this, you know, this many years old to go to New Zealand. I said, "Sandy, you're 20 years ahead of me, and there's a lot of work to do." So -- but recruiting, there are lots of paths to recruiting Native students, we'll just talk about Native students in LAS programs, and a variety of options. Distance programs may be the only option for some students. We have a strong residence program in Austin. And one thing we learned from -- I did a study the first five years of the Spectrum scholars, and if you're a person who says, I really support that, but I'm not a person of color, you know, I'm not quite sure. We found how it can help. We found in interviewing the first five years of Spectrum scholars that their mentors were not necessarily someone who looked like them or had similar backgrounds. And a lot of times these scholars said, you know, somebody in the workplace printed off the application for Spectrum. She said, I didn't even know that person knew me, but they came by and dropped it at my desk and said, "You better apply for this," or, "I really would like you to apply." So sometimes mentorship is momentary, you know, and the fact that this person then said, "Someone thought enough of me to consider that I would, you know, I should be a good applicant, that I followed through." So the combination of follow through and just even a suggestion, you know, could be a little trickster element, you know. I will help you, give you a little push sometimes, and that's very important, so everyone involved to give someone a push. It doesn't have to be a shove, but it can be some kind of push. [laughter] Does that answer the question, asked the reference librarian? Yes. [laughter] Anybody else? I see someone in the back. Female Speaker: Are some of your organizations [unintelligible] campaign? Loriene Roy: I'm sorry? Female Speaker: Are some of your organizations for the programs that you mentioned eligible for the Combined Federal Campaign of donations, government donations? Loriene Roy: I don't know, but I should find out. Female Speaker: Yeah. Okay. Loriene Roy: This year we're lucky to be kind of, I can't use the word partner, but collaborating with a lot of groups that are interested in services for Native people. Some of you might know about WGBH's American experience program that's under development, We Shall Remain. I'm leading them, the library initiative related to that, so we will have national programming related to that five episode television series that will air in January 2009. So WGBH, like the Lance Armstrong Foundation, NBA, boy, that's really great, too. NBA's development league in Oklahoma, Tulsa 66ers, is just starting a scholarship program, first one for Native basketball players, high school students, and they're hosting the first Native -- National Native Basketball Tournament next March, and I said, got to bring in reading, and I'll be there. [laughter] And got an e-mail today from -- you know, so that's fun. The little funny -- fun E-mails are exciting, the little bad E-mails I put in a file called "Bad." [laughter] Luckily it's not so big as the fun e-mail. A little bad file. You know, a student has a rough day, I say, you want to come look at this file I have? [laughter] People really hate me. I go, read that. It will make you feel real good. [laughter] Any other questions? Any ideas? I welcome ideas. You know how to find me. Students organize my campaign. They had me buy a domain name so you can find me at LorieneRoy.com. [laughter] So -- and so you can e-mail me there. Anything else? Any questions? We're doing other things this year for ALA, wellness initiative, big wellness fair at ALA annual with an exercise pavilion. You can learn how to do upper body hula. [laughter] They want to have a Dance Dance Revolution competition there. [laughter] I don't think I'll do it. [laughter] And midwinter we want to give out pedometers. Dr. Billington, a question. James Billington: You are doing a wonderful exposition now, a librarianship and the work that you're doing is getting more Native Americans, giving more possibilities to benefit from these sort of common features of the, of the learning experience in America that they haven't been able to benefit from as much. This is terrific work. What about the other way around? What is the sort of traditional mainstream? You get implications of this -- indications of this but I wonder if you as a professional bridge between these two worlds, what does the library community and the learning community have to learn from this oral culture and this very deep ancient roots that we're beginning to rediscover? How would you describe that? That we haven't yet fully discovered the treasures that are hidden there for everybody. Loriene Roy: So it's this bicultural stuff. In New Zealand they use biculture all the time, and here we do multicultural, kind of thing. If it's bicultural, who do you pick, you know. [laughter] You know the two and the bi. So Native culture, it continued to be this exchange, and a lot of times I think Native people like the history of Native people incorporating other elements that are outside and doing unusual things with them and doing it usually So what could be useful for non-Native communities? The efforts being made for Native language recovery are very interesting in the country and continue to be. There's people in the media that you might not, you know, recognize immediately as Native. Adam Beach, he's on Law and Order now, he's Anishinabe, so I'm really proud, you know. [laughter] The authentic original voices and the fact that there is a burgeoning of Native writing and especially for young audiences, that there are people we -- you might not know about that -- who are well known in Native communities, and others should know about them. You know, just the theme of the WGBH series, We Shall Remain, sounds like a threat, doesn't it? [laughter] I mean, it's like everything you can do, and we're still going to be here. [laughter] You know, it's kind of, I think, a good message as well. But -- and that, you know, kind of looking at the stereotypes that people might have, and realize that Native people love sushi and -- or don't. Native people have hair that looks like what you might think of, and don't. There's a friend of mine, Jerry Banoit [spelled phonetically], and he saw me, he's from Canada, and he said, "People say we're related, Loriene, but" -- I said, "Maybe we are, maybe we are." And he's a professor at Simmons, and he goes, "Okay." He said, "I'll see you tonight at the reception." Later at the reception he was a little cooler to me. And he says, "Okay, tell me why I don't go to powwows anymore." I looked at him, I go, "You're bald, and you're fair." And then he said, "Okay, you're Indian, you know." [laughter] So that sort of that co-teaching of life, I guess. That's kind of a rambling there. I don't know. Anything else? I think there's going to be food coming. We like that. [laughter] Okay. [applause] [end of transcript] LOC - 071102ctb1200 2 5/13/2010