Hello, Readers!

Welcome to the first edition of our Curiosity Seed Book Club! We’re so glad you’re here. Our November 2024 book club pick is…

The Indian Card: Who Gets to Be Native in America
by Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz

The Curiosity Seed Book Club is a thoughtful and fun newsletter featuring a new discussable book pick on the 2nd Friday of every other month. The club is designed with event planners, book club leaders, program coordinators, and bookish people in need of a little literary pick-me-up in mind. However, anyone is welcome to join!

We created this book club because we work with event planners from across the country every day. And, no matter your audience or industry, a consistent challenge that comes with the role of engaging with your community is the risk of fatigue and burnout. You spend so much time creating meaningful moments for other people. It’s time someone did that for you!

This book club is something fun, supportive, and free. Our reading picks are chosen with care to explore new perspectives and stories while also sparking curiosity. Each edition of the newsletter will include a brand new book pick, discussion guide, exclusive content, creative event ideas, and book giveaways. Please feel free to share this newsletter.

Happy Reading,
Katharyn & Karuna

The Indian Card gifts the reader with so much! It is unflinching in its accounting of history and the many wrongs committed by the U.S. Government, but it is also the intensely readable story of one scholar and researcher who set out to explore the process of Tribal enrollment for herself and her two children after the author realized her “Indian card” had expired. Each chapter also features stories and interviews with Native and Indigenous individuals from all over the country that the author met while exploring her own identity and the question of who really gets to be Native in America.

We are also reading The Indian Card this month because, in the United States, November is recognized as Native American Heritage Month. November 28th is also National Day of Mourning and it is important to remember the past and consider how we move forward.

We are delighted to confirm that 3 lucky subscribers will receive an advanced reading copy of The Indian Card! This month, we will be reaching out to…

Amanda K.

Sheena S.

Truly R.

Thanks for being a part of the book club! We will connect with you directly to get a mailing address for your copy of The Indian Card.

Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz is an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. She spent seven years working as a policy advisor in the Obama Administration, focusing on homelessness and Native policy. In addition to an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she holds a Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard University, and was a Fulbright Scholar in Denmark. She currently teaches public policy at the University of Iowa, where she also runs the Native Policy Lab.

She was awarded the Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant in 2023. Her debut nonfiction book, The Indian Card, is available wherever books are sold. Pick it up from your local library or favorite indie bookstore!

As a Midwesterner, do you have a favorite fall comfort food or autumn activity?

Carrie: I love the changing of the seasons, and fall is by far my favorite. We have a great pumpkin patch in our town, and we love taking our kids every year. 

When did you start to feel that your research was evolving into something that could be a book?

Carrie: My process was actually the reverse — I began writing what I thought would be a memoir. The more I wrote, the more I realized that I needed to incorporate research into the story.

Your work involves conducting numerous interviews and extensive research. Can you share your process for organizing all that material? Do you have a particular system that works best for you?

Carrie: I'm not an outliner, but I do like having a rough sense of where things will go in the book. That being said, when I conducted the interviews, I didn't commit them to any one particular section. That seemed to happen organically. Overall, it made sense to me to write the book as a timeline, so the material came together that way.

What is the strangest thing you Googled while researching/writing this book? Or the strangest piece of research you discovered?

Carrie: I never thought I'd be looking into the Mongolian Empire, but there I was. I remember texting my agent and editor and saying, "You'll never guess what I'm writing about now."

Readers will soon learn you have a fondness for spreadsheets—tell us more! Do you have a spreadsheet you are most proud of? Is there a unique way you use spreadsheets that you swear by?

Carrie: My brain has always thought in terms of data and columns/rows. The spreadsheets I'm most proud of are those that are connected to action. Right now, my research assistants and I are working on quantifying individual treaties between Native Tribes and the U.S. federal government, in terms of the land stolen and how much money Tribes were paid for it.

Your book is such a candid and meaningful examination of what it means to be Native in the United States. What's one thought you hope readers will dwell on even after they have turned the last page?

Carrie: I hope we can begin to have more meaningful conversations about the real ways that federal policies have shaped not just identity, but things like land ownership, wealth, and financial equity — particularly for communities of color. And, I hope those conversations include ways we can take action to right the wrongs of history.

Are you working on any current projects you would like to share?

Carrie: I am the Director of the Native Policy Lab at the University of Iowa and right now we're working on a project to return Indian Boarding School records to survivors, their families, and their Tribes. The project actually stemmed from the work I did with Karen and Don Diver as part of my interviews for The Indian Card. We're currently working off a list of over 200,000 children whose records exist in the National Archives.

We created an exclusive discussion guide for The Indian Card! Download the PDF here. A preview is available below.

We cannot host a book club for event planners without sharing a few ideas about how to engage with the book! If you are the kind of person who wants to talk about what you read, here are some ways to engage creatively with The Indian Card:

• November is also National Life Writing Month or Memoir Writing Month. The Indian Card started out as a memoir. Have you ever tried to write about your life? Carrie’s book is a wonderful example of how you may never know what will happen when you start telling your story. You might even want to get together with a group and write in a community atmosphere! If a published memoirist lives in your area, you could invite them to share a few tips over snacks before hosting a writing session for new memoir writers. Otherwise, the book Writing About Your Life is a great place to start.

• Respectfully learn more about the culture of the Native American Tribe closest to you. Explore which Tribal Nation’s lands you may be on here. Many Tribes host events and classes open to the public. Another way to engage with Native American culture is to get together with a few friends and watch a documentary or try out a recipe from the First Nations Development Institute.

• Host a Native Experiences Event celebrating the stories and artwork of Native and Indigenous people living in your community. Add a Human Library element to enhance the learning experience for attendees. You could even collect the art and stories shared into a book or recording that could be made available for the public to access at a local institution. You might even want to invite Carrie to speak about her experiences!

• Gather your fellow spreadsheet lovers and start creating sheets about something you are passionate about in your community. Perhaps it is outlining the growing instructions for all of the native plants in your community or a directory of literary sights and businesses in your area.