NDN Girls Book Club Begins Oklahoma Takeover

Trista Vaughn

19 May 2026 — 4 min read

Photo Courtesy: Wade Attakai

(OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla.) Kinsale Drake, founder and director of NDN Girls Book Club, described herself as a bookworm growing up who loved all forms of storytelling.

“I had been teaching workshops for several years and so the book club kind of came about pretty naturally,” Drake said.

After receiving a grant from the First Peoples Fund, Drake was able to kickstart the NDN Girls Book Club by sending out free books and care packages.

The Native-led nonprofit began with Drake running the entire program before Lily Painter and Tristan Douville joined the team.

Drake said she and Painter traveled to the Navajo and Hopi Nations, where they distributed 10,000 books in 2024.

“We went to Southeast Alaska, and Tristan was so integral to that whole journey, getting books to villages in Southeast Alaska, Tlingit and Haida villages,” said Drake.

Douville recalls a memory from the working Alaska Book Drop in 2025.

“To unbox 6,000 to 8,000 books in one room that were all Native-authored or centering Native voices and stories that weren't told, it brought tears to our eyes,” said Douville. “As a gay man, to see the stories about people like us in these books that we're giving out for free, it just brought so much warmth to my heart.”

Douville, board chair for NDN Girls Book Club, said the experience healed a part of him as a young Native gay professional. NDN Girls Book Club is for the gays, too.

For Drake, Painter, and Douville, those experiences laid the foundation for what NDN Girls Book Club would become.

Drake grew up in a matriarch-led household and knows the significance of centering Native girls and storytelling.

“Navajo women in my family are the center of our homes and the center of my life,” said Drake. “The kind of knowledge and wisdom and storytelling that Native women pass down is vital to our survival and also the vibrancy of our art and our peoples. Indigenous women are some of the most marginalized voices across all mediums, including literature, and that is done purposefully.”

Painter, co-coordinator and community manager for NDN Girls Book Club, grew up in Oklahoma and said many young people face restrictive gender expectations rooted in Southern culture.

“I think from a personal standpoint, the reason it's important to bring NDN Girls Book Club to Oklahoma is because there's so much more for girls than to just sort of grow up in that sort of secluded frame of what an Oklahoma kid is meant to do,” Painter said.

Painter said Oklahoma is full of women- and femme-led initiatives that often go unrecognized, which became an important part of the story behind bringing NDN Girls Book Club to the state.

“So that's always been a really big dream of mine on a personal level, just to be able to give back to the state because I really love Oklahoma so much and I think it's very misunderstood on a national level,” said Painter.

She said Oklahoma ranking 50th in education is a result of the state putting Native and BIPOC education at the center of ongoing censorship efforts, alongside a broader right-leaning shift in public education.

“I come from a family of educators,” said Painter. “I come from people that have to deal with the public school system as Native teachers primarily teach Native students. There are 39 tribes in Oklahoma, and each of them make up their own sort of sovereign body of land and sovereign needs of their education and their culture.”

Painter believes NDN Girls Book Club can help fill some of those gaps through partnerships and community support.

“I feel like the need is especially urgent to be in Oklahoma this year,” said Painter. “We're ready to tackle that sort of area head-on and we just really want to be here for the youth this year.”

As NDN Girls Book Club continues to grow, the team said their vision remains focused on making a lasting impact.

“I think it's so perfect that NDN Girls Book Club demonstrates that Native women-led dreams and initiatives can execute everything that huge nonprofits run by billionaires try to do,” said Douville. “People talk about Indigenous futurism and I want more people to realize that the future is now and it's being built by young Native women like Lily and Kinsale. That's what NDN Girls Book Club is.”

Douville said the organization also demonstrates how grassroots redistribution of resources can work.

“You don't have to be a billionaire to reach communities,” said Douville. “You can be a 20-something-year-old woman in rural America who is guided by Native values. I want the future to look more like NDN Girls Book Club and more like our Native values.”

Drake added that she hopes the organization continues reaching more people exponentially.

“We already know how best to work with what we have on this planet and so I think that's definitely become a priority too as well, alongside getting the books out and encouraging people to speak up, but hopefully getting people to become more aware of how vital it is for all people, genuinely, not just Native people,” said Drake. “Everybody should be reading and listening to Indigenous stories and to Indigenous voices because it's really important.”

NDN Girls Book Club encourages attendees to bring reusable bags, pick up books, and bring family and friends to upcoming events.

Donate to the NDN Girls Book Club to secure the bookmobile:

https://givebutter.com/ndngirlsbookmobile