The U of A One Book One Community Committee chose a book connected to the topic of Native American communities for the 2022 selection for the campus with the intention of increasing engagement with Native American students and community members. As a kick-off to Native American Heritage Month in November, One Book, One Community will be sponsoring an author keynote and a lunch panel discussion to coincide with Angeline Boulley's Firekeeper's Daughter book at the end of October.

Author Angeline Boulley will give a free public lecture at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 26, at the Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History for up to 100 attendees. This event will also be simulcast on Zoom for a remote attendance option. Zoom registration information for the author keynote will be released the week of the event.

The next day, on Oct. 27, there will be a lunch panel discussion featuring Boulley and local indigenous authors and artists moderated by Dr. Ben Ramirez, the UARK Multicultural Center Programming Coordinator. The lunch will be held in ARKU 512-513 from 12-1:30 p.m. Register here for a free ticket, as space is limited. This event will also be available via a remote option using Zoom here.

Boulley is an enrolled member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians and a storyteller who writes about her Ojibwe community in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. She is a former director of the Office of Indian Education at the U.S. Department of Education.

Firekeeper's Daughter, her debut novel, was an instant #1 NYT Bestseller and received the Walter Dean Myers Award for Outstanding Children's Literature, among other awards. It has also been chosen by numerous book clubs, including being a Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club YA Book pick. The book follows the life experiences of a young biracial, unenrolled tribal member, Daunis Fontaine, as she goes undercover for law enforcement to investigate a deadly drug in her community. Her story explores the complicated issues of citizenship, identity, history, culture, indigenous myth and connections to the oral history of one's ancestors.

As Caitlyn Paxson mentions in her NPR Book Review, "Firekeeper's Daughter is so, so much more than a thriller or a mystery. The author's love for and connection to her culture is so deeply engraved into the very heart of this book, and it beats in rhythm with each new plot development…There has long been a need for more books that depict Indigenous people as living people in our modern world rather than as a romanticized and often inaccurate fairytale of the past, and Firekeeper's Daughter carries that torch brightly. I can only imagine the impact it will make for teens who identify with Daunis and her cultural experience to see themselves reflected so beautifully in literature."

"We are excited to be partnering with the Pryor Center this year for our event. We wanted to increase our engagement with the local community and feel that the new location on the Fayetteville square will provide a more accessible location for the author talk. In addition, we can connect to and expand on the Pryor Center's mission to document history through the collection of spoken memories and visual records by bringing in an author focused on oral history and stories told by and about Indigenous girls and women," said Lauren Sabon, chair of the One Book, One Community Committee and teaching associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology.

As Boulley has said, "We exist and have dynamic experiences to share beyond history books or stories set long ago."

More information about the book, authors, and upcoming events and resources connected to the book can be found on the One Book, One Community website. You may also email onebook@uark.edu with questions.