Join us for Plattsburgh’s Big Read!

Join us for THE BIG READ!

This month long festival highlights sexual assault awareness, Native American culture, literacy, community, and the joy of reading through the sharing of “The Round House” by Louise Erdrich. Brought to the city through SUNY Plattsburgh, THE BIG READ will feature events, programs and exhibitions throughout April 2018.

The Big Read, a program by the National Endowment for the Arts, helps promote understanding and education of our communities, our world, and ourselves through a month-long reading festival.


The Book

“The Round House” will be the center of this reading festival during April 2018. “The Round House” tells the suspenseful tale of a 13-year-old boy’s investigation and desire for revenge following a brutal attack on his mother that leaves his father, a tribal judge, helpless in his pursuit to bring the perpetrator to justice.

To help spread this awareness, Mountain Lake PBS will be airing a series of programs related to the Native American themes in the book on Sundays at 2 pm in April.


On Mountain Lake PBS

Navajo Math Circles 4/1 – 1:00 pm

This program follows Navajo students in a collaboration with mathematicians. Using a model called math circles, the students stay late after school and assemble over the summer at Dine College in Tsaile, Arizona, to study mathematics.

The Forgotten War: The Struggle for North America 4/8 – 1:00 pm

Produced by Mountain Lake PBS, FORGOTTEN WAR: THE STRUGGLE FOR NORTH AMERICA recounts the little-known story of how the Indian nations of the Northeast controlled the outcome of the French and Indian War. An international panel of experts dig beneath the familiar history and shed new light on this long-ago conflict. The documentary follows the fates of the Abenaki and Iroquois people, separates fact from the myth of Robert Rogers and his legendary Rangers and chronicles the “massacre” at Fort William Henry, the battles of Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point, the tragic expulsion of the Acadians and the fall of Quebec and Montreal.

Mankiller 4/22- 2:00 pm

Learn about the legacy of Wilma Mankiller, who overcame sexism to emerge as the Cherokee Nation’s first woman Principal Chief. Through archival footage and interviews, MANKILLER examines the life of one of the country’s most important woman leaders

Mystery of Chaco Canyon 4/29 – 12:00 pm

Chaco Canyon, located in northwest New Mexico, is perhaps the only site in the world constructed in an elaborate pattern that mirrors the yearly cycle of the sun and the 19-year cycle of the moon. How did an ancient civilization, with no known written language, arrange its buildings into a virtual celestial calendar, spanning an area roughly the size of Ireland? Why did this society, ancestors of today’s Pueblo Indians, choose to establish the center of their world in the middle of such an arid, barren land? And why, after constructing buildings the size of the Roman Coliseum, did these same people deliberately seal them and abruptly leave? These enigmas have puzzled archaeologists for centuries. This program presents substantial evidence that the Chacoan people expressed a complex solar and lunar cosmology in their magnificent architecture. The discoveries documented in the film have transformed scientific understanding of this site — one of the most elaborate and mysterious of ancient Native-American ruins — and are revolutionizing perceptions of the Chacoan civilization. Robert Redford narrates.

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