For 27 years, Dublin-based nonprofit Friends of the Oglala Lakota has been donating books to communities in South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation. Recently, as the nonprofit begins the process of disbanding, it gifted a number of books on American Indian topics to the Dublin Public Library to acknowledge the local community’s years of support.
“We have donors from every town around here,” said president Nancy Cayford of Dublin.
Local donations make up the bulk of their worldwide fundraising, she said. “We honor all the people that were so generous over the years.”
The nonprofit donated about 24 books about American Indian tribes and topics to Dublin’s library, which cost almost $600.
Cayford said she made an effort to cover as many tribes as she could in the collection of books donated to the library. When asked for a good title to start with, Cayford recommended “Indian Givers” by Jack Weatherford, which had already been in Dublin’s collection.
“It just tells you so many things, from architecture to food, that we got from American Indians. Clothing, snowshoes, the way to fish, the way to catch lobsters,” she said.
The nonprofit is disbanding, because 78-year-old Cayford wants to step down as president and has been unable to find a successor.
“I can’t pack all the books and spend all the time ordering the books, writing all the thank you notes,” she said. “There’s nobody willing to step into that role.”
Friends of the Oglala Lakota has five other trustees, she said, four including her based in New Hampshire and a Lakota woman based in South Dakota. All are volunteers. Cayford also expressed gratitude to her neighbors, grandchildren, and husband for helping to pack and ship books over the years.
Cayford is non-Indian, and said her passion for working with indigenous communities started in her childhood in northern Maine, where she attended school with Mi’kmaq children, and picked potatoes with Canadian Mi’kmaq laborers on her father’s farm. She started the nonprofit out of a desire to serve after retiring from full time work, which included, among other things, handpainting canvas floorcloths for museums.
“It sort of chose me,” she said of working specifically with the Oglala, a sub-tribe of the Lakota people. The majority of Oglala live on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, which Cayford visits at least once a year.
“Years ago, the story goes, I asked a little girl [on the reservation] what she wanted to be when she grew up. She said “nothing”. That’s the word that she used.” she said. Inspiration struck when Cayford related the story to one of her friends in Dublin. “We should send them books,” the friend had said. “You can dream what you can be when you read a book,” Cayford said. “They take you away, they give you a fantasy and imagination and dreams.” She noted that many schools on the reservation didn’t have any books on their library shelves.
“I will send them what they want,” she said. Sometimes, teachers on the reservation ask for popular new young adult novels, such as “The Hate U Give” and “On the Comeup,” and other times they ask for books that are more American Indian inspired. “We try to send things that are fun, educational, especially with little kids. The teenagers, they like a good novel,” she said, noting that teens can learn more about history from a novel than a drier-styled nonfiction history. She said there were some donations she was unable to accept over the years, books that were too moldy or worn, as well as religious books, textbooks, and encyclopedias.
“We’ve always tried to be useful instead of thinking of ourselves as helping them. They can help themselves,” she said.
Her organization worked to “fill the gaps,” she said, such as finding money to buy books. There are a number of other nonprofits working with the reservation, she said, and recommended that people get in touch with individual schools in the future if they want to contribute specifically to book acquisitions. Cayford said the nonprofit plans to put their remaining funds towards scholarships for Lakota college students when it disbands.
Cayford said she will continue to visit the reservation. She said she would like to see changes in how the US teaches the history and current events associated with Native Americans, and pointed to Maine’s adoption of school curriculum written by the Penobscot Nation as a great accomplishment. Cayford said it’s important not to romanticize American Indians, but she wants to see a greater recognition of the issues they face today, including discrimination.