The building of Chief Moosomin School. (Chief Moosomin School/Facebook)

By Kenneth Cheung

FOR A BETTER FUTURE

Chief Moosomin School named Sask.’s sole recipient of 2025 Indigo literacy grant

Jun 4, 2025 | 11:45 AM

Chief Moosomin School in Cochin is receiving a $30,000 boost to support literacy. It’s the only school in Saskatchewan to be awarded this year’s Indigo Love of Reading Foundation (ILOR) grant.

The funding is part of a national program supporting high-needs schools across Canada. In total, $1.1 million is being distributed to 30 schools to improve access to books and reading materials.

For Teesha MacKenzie, a learning resource teacher at the school who helped apply for the grant, the funding marks a major step forward.

“I just noticed that we had a lack of resources in our classrooms for our teachers and students to use,” she said. “Our library also had just some holes that needed to be filled for the kids to be able to have quality reading books.”

MacKenzie said the money will be used to stock the school’s library with new fiction, non-fiction and Indigenous content, as well as to purchase classroom resources. She hopes the variety will help students better connect with reading.

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“There are a lot of really high-quality Indigenous content books that are out there these days, so it’s really nice to have those within our school because we are an Indigenous school,” she said.

Among the types of books she hopes to bring into the school are Ancestor Approved — a collection of stories from Indigenous authors — and Seamus the Rez Dog Detective, a children’s book about a reservation dog solving mysteries in a city.

MacKenzie said having books students can relate to makes a difference.

“Books aren’t just made-up, books can be real and if you are somebody who is a daydreamer, you can immerse yourself into a world,” she noted.

“It’s also giving them kind of a sense of identity.”

The funding is especially important in a rural setting, where students have limited access to public libraries.

“Unless their parents take them to the library in town [The Battlefords], which is a good 30-minute drive away. So for us, it’s giving our students more options to have books readily available,” she said.

According to the Council of Ministers of Education’s report cited by ILOR, stronger youth literacy is directly tied to higher high school graduation rates and better chances of post-secondary acceptance. For many students, especially in remote or underserved communities, having quality books at school can play a key role in their academic success.

That’s exactly the goal of the foundation, said ILOR executive director Rose Lipton.

“Through the Literacy Fund Grant, our goal is to reach and support as many Canadian youth as possible by equipping their schools with the resources needed to offer engaging, high-quality reading materials,” Lipton said in a release.

“This year’s grant recipients represent a diverse cross-section of communities and backgrounds. We’re proud to partner with an incredible group of schools and educational organizations to help children and educators achieve their literacy goals and get more kids excited about reading.”

MacKenzie said the new books should arrive in time for the next school year. The school expects to receive the funds by the end of June. All of the books will be purchased through Indigo.

“Our goals next year too, just as a school, is to really target our younger kids — focusing on that love of reading and the love of stories.”

Since its launch in 2004, ILOR has donated more than $36 million to over 3,600 Canadian schools.

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