Kim Sigafus is an award-winning Ojibwa writer and photographer whose family is from the White Earth Reservation in northwest Minnesota. She is an Illinois Humanities Road Scholar and gives presentations on Native harvest, history, and music. She coauthored two award-winning books: Native Writers: Voices of Power and Native Elders: Sharing Their Wisdom.

Patricia Cutright is Lakota and an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe. Reading and libraries have always been her passion; recognizing how reading can empower at all ages and socio-economic levels. Destiny was set while she worked at the university library as a student and her supervisor “informed” her that she would become a librarian. The rest is history, as they say. Patricia has lived in many places, from Brooklyn, New York, to the Federated States of Micronesia and many places in between, providing leadership in libraries along the way.

Stan Padilla honors his Yaqui ancestors. He is immersed in traditional native learning and lifeways. Stan is a multi-cultural and