Blackwell Library donates books to middle school for Native American Month

The Blackwell Public Library is celebrating Native American Heritage Month with a new book display as well as a donation to the Blackwell Middle School for an important lesson plan involving the tragic history of the Osage Reign of Terror. 

The Blackwell Library donated 25 copies of historian David Grann’s 2017 nonfiction novel “Killers of the Flower Moon” to Blackwell Middle School teacher Katie McConnell’s 8th grade English class in a gesture that the library stressed was important for acknowledging and preserving tribal history. 

“When the library heard that McConnell was seeking copies of the book, we took it as an opportunity to contribute to an important lesson plan,” said Head Librarian Tina Cavin. 

Grann’s novel has been a library mainstay since publication in 2017, and interest in it spiked in the years leading up to Martin Scorcese’s star-studded adaptation of it which was released in 2023 and was filmed in and around Osage County featuring a slew of Native American actors, many of whom were from the Blackwell area.

“The Blackwell Public Library is committed to preserving history and offering numerous resources to the public, including our extensive microfiche archive collection and countless historical nonfiction books about Oklahoma’s tribes including their histories, cultures, and customs,” said Library Director Talyn Spence. 

The Blackwell Public Library is home to a collection of authentic Kiowa paintings donated to the library by renowned Kaw City art collector Laura Clubb in the mid-1900s by the acclaimed “Kiowa Five” Stephen Mopope, Monroe Tsatoke, Jack Hokeah, Spencer Asah, and Lois Smoky under Oscar Boruse Jacobson, a University of Oklahoma art professor who studied across the world and was especially fond of Native American artwork, holding it to a high standard of regard that, at the time, was unheard of. 

“The Blackwell Public Library’s Oklahoma Room is proud to host these paintings, and we welcome everyone to come during November’s Native American Heritage Month to see these works and to browse our collection of books by Indigenous authors as well as books dating back to the 1800s about Oklahoma’s Indigenous tribes,” said Spence. 

For November, the Blackwell Library is also featuring a display for Native American Heritage Month featuring books about local tribes, and books by local authors including the Kaw Nation’s Susy Smith, a Blackwell local.