TUBA CITY, Ariz. — What is pink, has four wheels and contains millions of words? A massive pink truck filled with more than 10,000 Native books for people of all ages traveling across the Navajo and Hopi nations.
NDN Book Club partnered with the SBi Giving Foundation to distribute books, goodies and literary entertainment to areas across the Navajo and Hopi reservations — often called book deserts — April 1-5. The pink truck, nicknamed Pinky the Rezmobile by the NDN girls, was emblazoned with a graphic of a Native girl reading under a rainbow on its sides with the words “Yiłta! Book Drop” meaning, “I read it!”
Navajo Nation Vice President Richelle Montoya, Miss Navajo Nation Amy N. Reeves-Begaye and performer Radmilla Cody helped kickoff the Yiłta! tour at the Navajo Nation Library in Window Rock, April 1. The tour continued across the state to the Hopi Public Library in Kykotsmovi and Leupp Chapter House, April 2, Tuba City, April 3, Monument Valley, April 4, and finished up at the Diné College Library in Shiprock, New Mexico, April 5.
At Change Labs’ E-hub in Tuba City, a perfect sunny day made for the largest crowd on the tour, where people lined up for not just free books but Zines, calendars, bookmarks, and even socks and shoes. Vendors sold crafts and coffee. Abalone Press founder, Amber McCrary, emceed the event — a Tuba City High School Navajo dance group performed, and writers Erik Bitsui, Tyler Mitchell, Souksavanh T. Keovorabouth and Kianna Joe read some of their work.
“We didn’t expect for people to come flooding out,” said NDN Girls Book Club founder Kinslake Drake. “I mean we expected people to be excited because we’ve done this work for so long at this point, but (these have) definitely been the biggest events we’ve done.”
Drake, 24, was racing around the Tuba City pop-up in her pink Yiłta! t-shirt and ribbon skirt, helping to unpack boxes, making sure the performers were queued up and checking in with her aunt, who came to help from Navajo Mountain, Utah, where Drake spent much of her childhood.
“At the past events we’ve had, we’ve typically given out 400 or 500 books per event — just because that’s as much as our cars can hold,” Drake said.
Drake knew that with the assistance of the truck more people could be served. She thought 10,000 books would be equivalent to at least one new book in every household on the reservation.
“So that’s our hope with numbers, that’s where we came from,” she said.
One thing they didn’t realize would happen — but love that it did — was for school groups to make impromptu field trips to get books.
“At Hopi they just walked over from their classrooms because their school’s right there. At Leupp they just got all the kids on the bus and they came down from the boarding school dorms,” she said. “The (kids) have been so excited. I think most of all just excited about how beautiful the books are. They’re all new — it’s hard to get that many new books into places that are ‘book deserts.’”
The fact that all the books distributed were from Native authors made it more exciting.
“Of course in school, curriculums don’t prioritize Native literature, and so the other thing is we’re making sure its Native and Navajo writers front and center,” she said. “You can take as many (books) as you want and you can share them with people that you are going home to after the event.”
Drake said she hopes the books will journey across the reservations as they are shared between children. She said some of the kids gasped when they saw the covers of books they were going to get, especially any from Salina Bookshelf such as “Running with Changing Woman,” and the bilingual “The Three Little Sheep/Dibe Yazhi Taa’go Baa Hane.”
“The baby books we’re completely out of — those are all really, really popular because people love how pretty they are and of course it’s also in Navajo so the elders love it, they can read to the kids, and the kids can learn Navajo,” Drake said.
It wasn’t just school children that showed up to the pop-ups, but elders and many families with babies.
Kelly Wood, executive director for Cellular One’s new SBi Giving Foundation, said one of the things the foundation wanted to do to celebrate Cellular One’s 30th anniversary in the Four Corners area, was give back by helping fund a need in the local communities.
“We wanted to help families build in-home libraries with a variety of books for all age groups — so that’s what we have on the tour with us — we have books for pre-k kids all the way up to adult books,” Wood said. “Our objective was to help to bring culturally relevant books that can help families to build libraries and just really preserve culture and language.”
Wood said SBi reached out to NDN Girls Book Club and collaborated with Abalone Mountain Press and 4KINSHIP, a Diné owned sustainable artwear brand, to bring the books and products to the reservation.
“All of us together worked through our various networks and contacts, and we were able to purchase at deep discount — and a combination of donations with publishers across the country — over 10,000 books written by Native authors,” Wood said.
She highlighted that the attendance figures, with approximately 1,000 in Window Rock and 250 in Leupp, demonstrate a tangible need.
“(Cellular One/SBi) doesn’t just focus on straight-up technology, we want to make sure we’re meeting the needs of the people in some really neat and creative and meaningful ways,” Wood said.
NDN Girls Book Club
Drake founded the nonprofit NDN Girls Book Club upon graduating Yale University in 2022.
“I did my thesis on retaining Native students in higher education,” she said. “A lot of the things that go into retaining students are things that are pillars of book clubs, so part of my thesis was drafting an organization — actually putting it together and putting the website together.”
Drake took the idea and created NDN Girls Book Club, making sure the book club was attractive to Native youth.
“I knew I wanted it to be cute,” Drake said. “We wanted it to get kids excited. We wanted to have nice merch — it was always about working with artisans, uplifting Native women and queer artists.”
Drake added the organization also wanted to promote youth writers.
“We also do writing workshops for free,” she said. “We always do events for free for Native youth, and we also do virtual workshops and things like that. So it’s very holistic, it’s a Diné philosophy.”
NDN has partnered with universities around the country, and Indigenous schools, authors and booksellers to encourage Native literacy nationwide.
In February 2023, NDN was featured in Teen Vogue with a photo shoot and interview. Drake herself has appeared in Time magazine after becoming the first Native American National Student Poet at 17. She has also won more poetry awards and completed 30 other print and filmed interviews since.
Drake has been writing and reading since she was a small child, and originally thought of the book club idea as a girl.
“My parents loved collecting books for us so we have this bookshelf at Navajo Mountain just full of these amazing children’s books that we would find at yard sales or just shopping,” she said. “I just loved going out and reading and being with the land. That’s my hope, too, is that kids have that chance to do that.”
Drake will continue her literary journey this fall — starting her MFA in poetry at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee — but that doesn’t mean she’ll be abandoning her role at NDN.
“It’s three years paid and I chose it because it would allow me the freedom to keep doing this,” she said. “They support you when you go to travel for things like this.”
A primary aim of NDN is to inspire Indigenous children to explore creative paths, similar to the opportunities Drake was able to pursue.
“I think when they don’t see the books that are written by Natives, they don’t know that that’s a possibility for them,” Drake said.
Find out more at ndngirlsbookclub.org
TUBA CITY, Ariz. — What is pink, has four wheels and contains millions of words? A massive pink truck filled with more than 10,000 Native books for people of all ages traveling across the Navajo and Hopi nations.
NDN Book Club partnered with the SBi Giving Foundation to distribute books, goodies and literary entertainment to areas across the Navajo and Hopi reservations — often called book deserts — April 1-5. The pink truck, nicknamed Pinky the Rezmobile by the NDN girls, was emblazoned with a graphic of a Native girl reading under a rainbow on its sides with the words “Yiłta! Book Drop” meaning, “I read it!”
Navajo Nation Vice President Richelle Montoya, Miss Navajo Nation Amy N. Reeves-Begaye and performer Radmilla Cody helped kickoff the Yiłta! tour at the Navajo Nation Library in Window Rock, April 1. The tour continued across the state to the Hopi Public Library in Kykotsmovi and Leupp Chapter House, April 2, Tuba City, April 3, Monument Valley, April 4, and finished up at the Diné College Library in Shiprock, New Mexico, April 5.
At Change Labs’ E-hub in Tuba City, a perfect sunny day made for the largest crowd on the tour, where people lined up for not just free books but Zines, calendars, bookmarks, and even socks and shoes. Vendors sold crafts and coffee. Abalone Press founder, Amber McCrary, emceed the event — a Tuba City High School Navajo dance group performed, and writers Erik Bitsui, Tyler Mitchell, Souksavanh T. Keovorabouth and Kianna Joe read some of their work.
“We didn’t expect for people to come flooding out,” said NDN Girls Book Club founder Kinslake Drake. “I mean we expected people to be excited because we’ve done this work for so long at this point, but (these have) definitely been the biggest events we’ve done.”
Drake, 24, was racing around the Tuba City pop-up in her pink Yiłta! t-shirt and ribbon skirt, helping to unpack boxes, making sure the performers were queued up and checking in with her aunt, who came to help from Navajo Mountain, Utah, where Drake spent much of her childhood.
“At the past events we’ve had, we’ve typically given out 400 or 500 books per event — just because that’s as much as our cars can hold,” Drake said.
Drake knew that with the assistance of the truck more people could be served. She thought 10,000 books would be equivalent to at least one new book in every household on the reservation.
“So that’s our hope with numbers, that’s where we came from,” she said.
One thing they didn’t realize would happen — but love that it did — was for school groups to make impromptu field trips to get books.
“At Hopi they just walked over from their classrooms because their school’s right there. At Leupp they just got all the kids on the bus and they came down from the boarding school dorms,” she said. “The (kids) have been so excited. I think most of all just excited about how beautiful the books are. They’re all new — it’s hard to get that many new books into places that are ‘book deserts.’”
The fact that all the books distributed were from Native authors made it more exciting.
“Of course in school, curriculums don’t prioritize Native literature, and so the other thing is we’re making sure its Native and Navajo writers front and center,” she said. “You can take as many (books) as you want and you can share them with people that you are going home to after the event.”
Drake said she hopes the books will journey across the reservations as they are shared between children. She said some of the kids gasped when they saw the covers of books they were going to get, especially any from Salina Bookshelf such as “Running with Changing Woman,” and the bilingual “The Three Little Sheep/Dibe Yazhi Taa’go Baa Hane.”
“The baby books we’re completely out of — those are all really, really popular because people love how pretty they are and of course it’s also in Navajo so the elders love it, they can read to the kids, and the kids can learn Navajo,” Drake said.
It wasn’t just school children that showed up to the pop-ups, but elders and many families with babies.
Kelly Wood, executive director for Cellular One’s new SBi Giving Foundation, said one of the things the foundation wanted to do to celebrate Cellular One’s 30th anniversary in the Four Corners area, was give back by helping fund a need in the local communities.
“We wanted to help families build in-home libraries with a variety of books for all age groups — so that’s what we have on the tour with us — we have books for pre-k kids all the way up to adult books,” Wood said. “Our objective was to help to bring culturally relevant books that can help families to build libraries and just really preserve culture and language.”
Wood said SBi reached out to NDN Girls Book Club and collaborated with Abalone Mountain Press and 4KINSHIP, a Diné owned sustainable artwear brand, to bring the books and products to the reservation.
“All of us together worked through our various networks and contacts, and we were able to purchase at deep discount — and a combination of donations with publishers across the country — over 10,000 books written by Native authors,” Wood said.
She highlighted that the attendance figures, with approximately 1,000 in Window Rock and 250 in Leupp, demonstrate a tangible need.
“(Cellular One/SBi) doesn’t just focus on straight-up technology, we want to make sure we’re meeting the needs of the people in some really neat and creative and meaningful ways,” Wood said.
NDN Girls Book Club
Drake founded the nonprofit NDN Girls Book Club upon graduating Yale University in 2022.
“I did my thesis on retaining Native students in higher education,” she said. “A lot of the things that go into retaining students are things that are pillars of book clubs, so part of my thesis was drafting an organization — actually putting it together and putting the website together.”
Drake took the idea and created NDN Girls Book Club, making sure the book club was attractive to Native youth.
“I knew I wanted it to be cute,” Drake said. “We wanted it to get kids excited. We wanted to have nice merch — it was always about working with artisans, uplifting Native women and queer artists.”
Drake added the organization also wanted to promote youth writers.
“We also do writing workshops for free,” she said. “We always do events for free for Native youth, and we also do virtual workshops and things like that. So it’s very holistic, it’s a Diné philosophy.”
NDN has partnered with universities around the country, and Indigenous schools, authors and booksellers to encourage Native literacy nationwide.
In February 2023, NDN was featured in Teen Vogue with a photo shoot and interview. Drake herself has appeared in Time magazine after becoming the first Native American National Student Poet at 17. She has also won more poetry awards and completed 30 other print and filmed interviews since.
Drake has been writing and reading since she was a small child, and originally thought of the book club idea as a girl.
“My parents loved collecting books for us so we have this bookshelf at Navajo Mountain just full of these amazing children’s books that we would find at yard sales or just shopping,” she said. “I just loved going out and reading and being with the land. That’s my hope, too, is that kids have that chance to do that.”
Drake will continue her literary journey this fall — starting her MFA in poetry at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee — but that doesn’t mean she’ll be abandoning her role at NDN.
“It’s three years paid and I chose it because it would allow me the freedom to keep doing this,” she said. “They support you when you go to travel for things like this.”
A primary aim of NDN is to inspire Indigenous children to explore creative paths, similar to the opportunities Drake was able to pursue.
“I think when they don’t see the books that are written by Natives, they don’t know that that’s a possibility for them,” Drake said.
Find out more at ndngirlsbookclub.org