About Maadagindan
About
Maadagindan – Start Reading is an online book club for parents, teachers, educators or anyone that loves to read to children. The book club focuses on Ojibwe culture and the Great Lakes. We meet seasonally, 4 times in the ziigwan (spring) and 4 times in the dagwaagin (autumn), to discuss the current book selections in a conversation led by an honored Native guest.
On this page
Our Partners
Maadagindan is a collaboration between the Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC), Wisconsin Sea Grant, the Wisconsin Water Library, and our honored guests.
Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC)
The GLIFWC is an intertribal agency composed of eleven Ojibwe tribes in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. GLIFWC’s purpose is to assist its member tribes in exercising their reservation treaty rights to hunt, fish, and gather in the territories ceded in the 1836, 1837, 1842, and 1854 Treaties.
Wisconsin Sea Grant
Wisconsin Sea Grant is a statewide program of basic and applied research, education, outreach and technology transfer dedicated to the stewardship and sustainable use of the nation’s Great Lakes and ocean resources. It is part of a national network of 34 university-based programs.
Wisconsin Water Library
The Wisconsin Water Library is a collection of 30,000 volumes of water-related information about the Great Lakes and the waters of Wisconsin. We are an academic library housed at the University of Wisconsin–Madison that is also open to the public.
Our Honored Guests
We are forever grateful for the honored guests that join us to lead our conversations each month. They have generously gifted us stories and wisdom, and we will respect these gifts in our work with young learners.
Want to know more about Indigenous literature?
Contributors
These Water Library people have helped to create and run Maadagindan!
Morgan Coleman (2021)
Morgan Coleman is a recent graduate of the University of Wisconsin-River Falls with a bachelor’s degree in English. She is now pursuing a graduate degree at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Maya Reinfeldt (2021-2022)
Maya Reinfeldt graduated from UW–Madison with a BA in Russian Literature and International Studies in 2022. She was the WWL library assistant and community engaged intern from 2021-22, where she developed an appreciation for library science and community outreach. Maya then spent four years as the Badger Talks Coordinator, facilitating engagement between UW–Madison faculty & staff and Wisconsin communities. She is currently pursuing her M. Phil in Comparative Literature at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.
India-Bleu Niehoff (2023-2025)
India-Bleu Niehoff was the library assistant and community engaged intern in the library from 2023 to 2025. She is currently a Cataloging Librarian at the Utah State Library where she works with libraries, both public and Tribal, around the state to increase access and discoverability. She received both her BA and MLIS from UW–Madison.
Dela Anderson (2024-2025)
Dela Anderson was the community engaged education intern from 2024-2025. They hold a BA in Environmental Studies and are pursuing an MS in Water Resources Management at UW–Madison, with a focus on environmental justice.
Olivia Langby (2025 to 2026)
Olivia Langby was a library assistant from 2025-2026 and will finish her MA in Library and Information Studies in 2026 with a focus on digital librarianship. Her professional interests span public librarianship, cataloging and metadata, and digital information design.
Risa Stiegler (2026 to present)
Risa Stiegler is the current library assistant. She is pursuing her MA in Library and Information Studies and will graduate in 2027. Before library school, she worked on a research study exploring child language development at the Purdue LLaMA Lab. She is interested in reference, metadata, research data management, and digital scholarship.
Anne Moser
Anne Moser joined Wisconsin Sea Grant as a special librarian in February 2008, after 20 years working as an environmental librarian. She manages Wisconsin’s Water Library, an outreach library whose mission is to collect and preserve library collections and provide library services in support of the mission of Wisconsin Sea Grant.
Register for Upcoming Meetings
Or check out our list of past seasons and the books we’ve read.