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Thousands of pages from historical newspapers near and on tribal nations in Montana are now available and searchable online through the Library of Congress.
Yellowstone Public Radio’s Kayla Desroches reports.
The Montana Historical Society recently finished a two-year project where they archived more than 100,000 newspaper pages dating back to the early 1900s.
Library manager Dan Karalus says those include for the first time pages from the communities of Browning on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, Harlem by Fort Belknap, Hot Springs on the Flathead Indian Reservation, and Poplar on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation.
“Newspapers that might have more native news, might have more coverage of tribes. And then those towns were also just kind of underrepresented in terms of our digital holdings.”
The Montana Historical Society received $263,000 from the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities for the project.
Click here to view the archive
The Haida children’s book Kúndlaan: The Wolf Pup with Moonlight in Her Eyes was released last November.
It’s the third in a series.
A book release party was held at Seattle’s Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture for author Sondra Segundo.
As Jill Fratis from our flagship station KNBA reports, it’s translated in both Haida and English.
Segundo was a former teacher and left her full-time job to pursue reviving the Alaskan Haida language, a critically endangered language.
She felt in order to do that, she needed to start with the children.
“There were no Indigenous authors, especially children book authors at that time. I searched high and low for good books that represented my people correctly, so I started writing my books so my three children could see themselves represented.”
Kúndlaan tells the story of a wolf pup who takes an exciting trip to the moon, and it is inspired by ancient Haida stories.
Kúndlaan is among the first children’s books to ever be published entirely in Alaskan Haida.
Segundo says creating these books went far beyond telling stories.
Due to a ban on speaking the Native language in schools back in the late 1800’s, Segundo says the language continued to die with every generation.
Still, she says, the Elders tried their best to instill their Indigenous culture to the children.
“And then as time went on, I learned more of why our elders didn’t teach us our language. And that just broke my heart. They protected our culture. But in the safe places in our village, we would be singing, laughing, telling stories in Haida, eating our traditional foods, so they still taught us but it was in a protected way, in a safe place. And I just remember them closing doors and curtains, and you know, to teach us sometimes, just because they were so punished for just being Indigenous and speaking our language, and I just want to take everything back that they tried to take from us, you know.”
Now residing in Seattle, Segundo speaks passionately about her upbringing in Hydaburg, Alaska.
“I grew up surrounded by birth speakers, and I didn’t really know how blessed I was at the time hearing their voices and their songs, and they planted a lot of songs in me, and words in me. Because I love to sing, I love music, so I just was like a sponge.”
Segundo said when her youngest granddaughter was born, her daughter wanted her first words she ever heard to be in the Haida language.
“And when she was born, my daughter wanted her first words in this realm to be Haida. So, she had a Native doula in the room, it was during Covid, and the Native Doula made the doctors and nurses be silent, so I could speak the first words to her.”
Courtesy Sondra Segundo
During the book release party, Segundo read aloud all three of her books, Kúndlaan: The Wolf Pup with Moonlight in his Eyes, Orca Eyes, and Love Birds: the True Story of Raven and Eagle.
She also gave an art lesson, and taught the audience a Haida dance.
Also in the books, which Segundo illustrated herself, she has songs all translated in Haida and says at the end of the day, speaking and singing your Native language is what keeps your culture alive.
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