text:
List of Canadian playwrights

Playwrights from Canada include:

A

 * Marianne Ackerman
 * Kawa Ada
 * Evan Adams
 * Carmen Aguirre
 * André Alexis
 * Hrant Alianak
 * Martha Allan
 * Anne-Marie Alonzo
 * Karim Alrawi
 * Kanika Ambrose
 * Janet Amos
 * Debra Anderson
 * Hugh Abercrombie Anderson
 * John Murray Anderson
 * Ben Antao
 * Trey Anthony
 * Salvatore Antonio
 * Leslie Arden
 * Anthony Armstrong
 * Daniel Arnold
 * Lawrence Aronovitch
 * Nina Arsenault
 * Damien Atkins
 * Napoléon Aubin
 * Suzanne Aubry
 * Barry Avrich
 * Caroline Azar

B

 * Bilal Baig
 * Catherine Banks
 * Keith Barker
 * Jean Basile
 * Mary Elizabeth Bayer
 * Tara Beagan
 * Christine Beaulieu
 * Victor-Lévy Beaulieu
 * Charles William Bell
 * Martin Bellemare
 * John Bemrose
 * Carolyn Bennett
 * Janette Bertrand
 * Lillian Beynon Thomas
 * Yvan Bienvenue
 * Geneviève Billette
 * Nicolas Billon
 * Marthe Blackburn
 * Mark Blagrave
 * William Rufus Blake
 * Seymour Blicker
 * Laurie Block
 * Peter Blue Cloud
 * Columpa Bobb
 * Adam Bock
 * Carol Bolt
 * Yolanda Bonnell
 * Walter Borden
 * Gary Botting
 * Michel Marc Bouchard
 * Denise Boucher
 * Pan Bouyoucas
 * Gail Bowen
 * Leah-Simone Bowen
 * George Boyd
 * Diana Braithwaite
 * Ken Brand
 * Marie Brassard
 * Morwyn Brebner
 * Baba Brinkman
 * Fanny Britt
 * Cecil Broadhurst
 * Leanna Brodie
 * Eve Brodlique
 * Daniel Brooks
 * Kenneth Brown
 * Mark Brownell
 * Walter Bruno
 * Ronnie Burkett
 * Aaron Bushkowsky
 * Alec Butler

C

 * Chantal Cadieux
 * Jason Cadieux
 * Morley Callaghan
 * George Frederick Cameron
 * Silver Donald Cameron
 * Normand Canac-Marquis
 * Cliff Cardinal
 * Dave Carley
 * Franco Catanzariti
 * Kate Cayley
 * Catherine Chabot
 * Rick Chafe
 * Robert Chafe
 * Anna Chatterton
 * Normand Chaurette
 * Martha Chaves
 * Shirley Cheechoo
 * Évelyne de la Chenelière
 * Leah Cherniak
 * Charly Chiarelli
 * Herménégilde Chiasson
 * Mary-Colin Chisholm
 * Anne Chislett
 * Ins Choi
 * Olivier Choinière
 * Sally Clark
 * Cheril N. Clarke
 * George Elliott Clarke
 * Marie Clements
 * Fabien Cloutier
 * George Clutesi
 * Lisa Codrington
 * Joy Coghill
 * Susan G. Cole
 * Megan Gail Coles
 * Kathryn Colquhoun
 * Germaine Comeau
 * Tom Cone
 * Darla Contois
 * Christopher Cook
 * Michael Cook
 * Beverley Cooper
 * Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman
 * Amanda Cordner
 * Belinda Cornish
 * Michel Côté
 * Louise Cotnoir
 * John Coulter
 * Douglas Coupland
 * Gracia Couturier
 * Susan Coyne
 * Archie Crail (Exile)
 * Mark Crawford
 * Seán Cummings
 * Peter Cureton
 * Colleen Curran
 * Sheldon Currie
 * Sarah Anne Curzon
 * Eliza Lanesford Cushing
 * May Cutler
 * René Richard Cyr

D

 * Jean-Marc Dalpé
 * Joseph A. Dandurand
 * Daniel Danis
 * Jill Daum
 * Robertson Davies
 * TJ Dawe
 * Tracy Dawson
 * Claire Dé
 * Mazo de la Roche
 * Vincent de Tourdonnet
 * Jeanne-Mance Delisle
 * David Demchuk
 * Sandra Dempsey
 * Merrill Denison
 * Charles Dennis
 * Denise Desautels
 * Peter Desbarats
 * Aurore Dessureault-Descôteaux
 * Claudia Dey
 * David Di Giovanni
 * Ned Dickens
 * Dick Diespecker
 * Dorothy Dittrich
 * Sean Dixon
 * Emma Donoghue
 * Catherine Dorion
 * Chris Doty
 * Clive Doucet
 * Nathalie Doummar
 * Bruce Dowbiggin
 * Brian Drader
 * Claire Drainie Taylor
 * Don Druick
 * Jasmine Dubé
 * Marcel Dubé
 * René-Daniel Dubois
 * Réjean Ducharme
 * Paul Dunn
 * Louise Dupré
 * Louisette Dussault
 * Ted Dykstra

E

 * Chris Earle (Radio :30)
 * Gwaai Edenshaw
 * Mary Susanne Edgar
 * Matthew Edison
 * Caterina Edwards
 * Tom Edwards
 * Kris Elgstrand
 * Cathy Elliott
 * Richard Epp
 * Josh Epstein
 * Rose-Maïté Erkoreka
 * Gloria Escomel
 * Gérard Étienne
 * Hubert Evans

F

 * Abla Farhoud
 * David Fennario (Balconville, Joe Beef)
 * Ian Ferguson
 * Trevor Ferguson
 * Timothy Findley (Elizabeth Rex, The Stillborn Lover)
 * Lois Fine
 * Larry Fineberg
 * Thom Fitzgerald (Cloudburst)
 * Diane Flacks
 * Waawaate Fobister (Agokwe)
 * Cheryl Foggo
 * Dennis Foon (The Short Tree and the Bird That Could Not Sing)
 * Honor Ford-Smith
 * Norm Foster (Sinners, The Affections of May)
 * Brian Francis (Box 4901)
 * Brad Fraser (Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love, Poor Super Man)
 * Carole Fréchette
 * Louis-Honoré Fréchette
 * Pauline Fréchette
 * David French (Leaving Home, Salt-Water Moon)
 * William Fruet
 * Robin Fulford (Steel Kiss, Whitewash)
 * Janine Fuller

G

 * Linda Gaboriau
 * Lorena Gale
 * Brendan Gall
 * Mavis Gallant
 * Steve Galluccio
 * Ken Garnhum
 * Bill Gaston
 * C. E. Gatchalian
 * Jean-Rock Gaudreault
 * Connie Gault
 * Gratien Gélinas
 * Jean-Claude Germain
 * Samuel Gesser
 * Melissa James Gibson
 * Florence Gibson MacDonald
 * Sky Gilbert
 * Joanna Glass
 * François Godin
 * Mathieu Gosselin
 * Alexandre Goyette
 * Gwethalyn Graham
 * Rachel Graton
 * Robert Gravel
 * Carolyn Gray
 * John MacLachlan Gray
 * Jeff Green
 * Nick Green
 * Richard Greenblatt
 * Brit Griffin
 * Linda Griffiths
 * Larry Guno
 * David Gurr
 * Paul Gury

H

 * Alexandria Haber
 * Emma Haché
 * Brigitte Haentjens
 * Abby Hagyard
 * Medina Hahn
 * Jason Hall
 * Jordan Hall
 * Marie-Lynn Hammond
 * Don Hannah
 * Herschel Hardin
 * Allana Harkin
 * Don Harron
 * Kim Senklip Harvey
 * Elliott Hayes
 * Michael Healey
 * Charles Heavysege
 * Marie-Francine Hébert
 * Terence Heffernan
 * David Hein
 * Matthew Heiti
 * Tom Hendry
 * Kate Hennig
 * John Herbert
 * Catherine Hernandez
 * Kate Hewlett
 * Tomson Highway
 * Brian Hill
 * John Stephen Hill (Steve Hill)
 * Ernest Hillen
 * Karen Hines
 * Ho Ka Kei (Jeff Ho)
 * Susan Holbrook
 * Arthur Holden
 * Norah M. Holland
 * Margaret Hollingsworth
 * Michael Hollingsworth
 * Hilda Mary Hooke
 * Raymond Hull
 * J. Timothy Hunt
 * Maureen Hunter
 * Joel Thomas Hynes

I

 * John Ibbitson
 * Neamat Imam
 * Anosh Irani
 * Steve Ivings

J

 * Donald Jack
 * Ted Johns
 * Becky Johnson
 * Terry Jordan
 * Patricia Joudry

K

 * Hiro Kanagawa
 * Margo Kane
 * M. J. Kang
 * Greg Kearney
 * Jillian Keiley
 * Adam Kelly
 * M. T. Kelly
 * Olivier Kemeid
 * Kevin Kerr
 * Paul Kimball
 * Deborah Kimmett
 * Gary Klang
 * Robert Knuckle
 * Andrew Kooman
 * Greg Kramer
 * John Krizanc
 * Daniel Krolik
 * Sunil Kuruvilla
 * Andrew Kushnir

L

 * Marie Laberge
 * Rosa Labordé
 * Jonathan Lachlan-Stewart
 * Robert Lalonde
 * Ann Lambert
 * Betty Lambert
 * André Langevin
 * Gilbert La Rocque
 * Rina Lasnier
 * Jesse LaVercombe
 * Mishka Lavigne
 * John Lazarus
 * Marie-Christine Lê-Huu
 * Walter Learning
 * Suzanne Lebeau
 * Paul Sun-Hyung Lee
 * Catherine Léger
 * Mark Leiren-Young
 * Anne Legault
 * Stewart Lemoine
 * Suvendrini Lena
 * Robert Lepage
 * François Létourneau
 * Léo Lévesque
 * Raymond Lévesque
 * Georgina Lightning
 * Hillar Liitoja
 * Wendy Lill
 * James Long
 * Françoise Loranger
 * Kevin Loring
 * Otto Lowy
 * Kate Lynch

M

 * Greg MacArthur
 * Andrew MacBean
 * Ann-Marie MacDonald
 * Bryden MacDonald
 * Maggie MacDonald
 * Lee MacDougall
 * Matthew MacFadzean
 * David Macfarlane
 * Daniel MacIvor
 * Cory Mack
 * Isabel Mackay
 * Matthew MacKenzie
 * Michael Mackenzie
 * Michael MacLennan
 * Joan MacLeod
 * Andrew Macphail
 * Michèle Magny
 * Gilles Maheu
 * Louise Maheux-Forcier
 * Antonine Maillet
 * André Major
 * Kevin Major
 * Anita Majumdar
 * Robert Majzels
 * Ahdri Zhina Mandiela
 * Stanley Mann
 * Vera Manuel
 * Barbara March
 * Josephine Marchand
 * Jovette Marchessault
 * Robert Marinier
 * Tanya Marquardt
 * Alexis Martin
 * Bob Martin
 * Paul Nicholas Mason
 * Stephen Massicotte
 * Catherine Mavrikakis
 * Maxim Mazumdar
 * Tawiah M'carthy
 * Drew McCreadie
 * Kathleen McDonnell
 * Peter McGehee
 * Berend McKenzie
 * Ian McLachlan
 * Mike McLeod
 * Rick McNair
 * Mike McPhaden
 * Maureen Medved
 * Mary Melfi
 * Billy Merasty
 * Robert Merritt
 * Claude Meunier
 * Andrée A. Michaud
 * Pauline Michel
 * Marco Micone
 * John Mighton
 * Jean-Louis Millette
 * Michael Mirolla
 * Fawzia Mirza
 * W. O. Mitchell
 * Boonaa Mohammed
 * Frank Moher
 * Monique Mojica
 * Émilie Monnet
 * Andrew Moodie
 * Ellie Moon
 * Fiona Moore
 * Mavor Moore
 * Robert Moore
 * Greg Morrison
 * Kim Morrissey
 * Hannah Moscovitch
 * Daniel David Moses
 * Arthur Motyer
 * Wajdi Mouawad
 * Grace Helen Mowat
 * Neil Munro
 * Janet Munsil
 * Colleen Murphy
 * Rory Mullarkey
 * John Murrell

N

 * Tony Nardi
 * Michael Nathanson
 * Yvette Naubert
 * Dan Needles
 * Louis Negin
 * James W. Nichol
 * Eric Nicol
 * Francine Noël
 * Yvette Nolan
 * Alden Nowlan

O

 * Darren O'Donnell
 * Sean Harris Oliver
 * Anne-Marie Olivier
 * Leo Orenstein
 * Cathy Ostlere
 * Mieko Ouchi

P

 * André Paiement
 * Alisa Palmer
 * John Palmer
 * Morris Panych
 * David Paquet
 * Jivesh Parasram
 * Amanda Parris
 * Evalyn Parry
 * Ngozi Paul
 * Teresa Pavlinek
 * Corey Payette
 * Deborah Pearson
 * Howard Pechet
 * Soraya Peerbaye
 * Maryse Pelletier
 * Len Peterson
 * Pierre Petitclair
 * Adam Pettle
 * M. NourbeSe Philip
 * Marjorie Pickthall
 * Joseph Jomo Pierre
 * Gordon Pinsent
 * Jean-Paul Pinsonneault
 * Lorraine Pintal
 * Al Pittman
 * Richard Pochinko
 * Sharon Pollock
 * Helen Fogwill Porter
 * Paul David Power
 * Peter Pringle
 * Stefan Psenak

Q

 * Joseph Quesnel
 * Sina Queyras
 * Christine Quintana

R

 * Gyllian Raby
 * Lara Rae
 * Gord Rand
 * Karin Randoja
 * James Reaney
 * Kelly Rebar
 * Michael Redhill
 * Kim Renders
 * Sean Reycraft
 * Charlie Rhindress
 * Christopher Richards
 * Jael Richardson
 * Gwen Pharis Ringwood
 * Harry Rintoul
 * Erika Ritter
 * William Harris Lloyd Roberts
 * Marie-Colombe Robichaud
 * Ajmer Rode
 * Jean-Pierre Ronfard
 * Michael E. Rose
 * Ian Ross
 * Vittorio Rossi (Little Blood Brother, Backstreets, The Chain, The Last Adam, Paradise By The River, A Carpenter's Trilogy)
 * Anusree Roy
 * Baņuta Rubess
 * Saul Rubinek
 * Armand Garnet Ruffo
 * Rusty Ryan
 * George Ryga

S

 * Oren Safdie
 * Donna-Michelle St. Bernard
 * Rick Salutin (1837, Les Canadiens)
 * Kat Sandler (Mustard)
 * Irene Sankoff
 * Paolo Santalucia
 * Booth Savage
 * Marie Savard
 * Emmanuel Schwartz
 * Munroe Scott
 * Djanet Sears (Harlem Duet, The Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God)
 * Adam Seelig
 * Lorraine Segato
 * Goh Poh Seng
 * Sandra Shamas (My Boyfriend's Back and There's Gonna Be Laundry)
 * Jason Sherman (The League of Nathans, Reading Hebron)
 * Erin Shields (If We Were Birds)
 * Tetsuro Shigematsu
 * Rick Shiomi
 * Reuben Ship
 * Alfred Silver
 * Beverley Rosen Simons
 * Lister Sinclair
 * Jaspreet Singh (Speak, Oppenheimer)
 * Pamela Mala Sinha (Crash, Happy Place)
 * Christine Sioui-Wawanoloath
 * Sonja Skarstedt
 * Bernard Slade
 * Annabel Soutar
 * Ron Sparks
 * Harry Standjofski
 * Kate Sterns
 * Kent Stetson (The Harps of God, Warm Wind in China)
 * Aurora Stewart de Peña
 * Raymond Storey (The Saints and Apostles, The Glorious 12th)
 * Allan Stratton (Rexy!, 72 Under the O)
 * Cordelia Strube
 * Addena Sumter-Freitag
 * Olivier Sylvestre

T

 * Mariko Tamaki
 * Ian Tamblyn
 * Jordan Tannahill
 * Drew Hayden Taylor
 * Deanne Taylor
 * Bobby Theodore
 * Vern Thiessen
 * Colin Thomas
 * Andy Thompson (Broken Sex Doll, The Birth of Freedom)
 * Judith Thompson
 * Paul Thompson
 * Peggy Thompson
 * Scott Thompson
 * Kristen Thomson (I, Claudia)
 * Shannon Thunderbird
 * Charles Tidler
 * Sara Tilley
 * Jackie Torrens
 * Paul Toupin
 * Theresa Tova
 * Jennifer Tremblay
 * Larry Tremblay (The Dragonfly of Chicoutimi)
 * Lise Tremblay
 * Michel Tremblay (Les Belles-sœurs, Albertine in Five Times)
 * Roland Michel Tremblay
 * Terry Tweed

U

 * Priscila Uppal
 * Geoffrey Ursell

V

 * Lise Vaillancourt
 * Guy Vanderhaeghe
 * R. M. Vaughan
 * Royce Vavrek
 * Guillermo Verdecchia
 * Mary Vingoe
 * Padma Viswanathan
 * Herman Voaden

W

 * Michael Wade
 * Colleen Wagner
 * Stephen Waldschmidt
 * Craig Walker
 * George F. Walker
 * Tom Walmsley
 * Agnes Walsh
 * Chris Ward
 * Dianne Warren
 * David Watmough
 * Wilfred Watson
 * Irene N. Watts
 * Alison Wearing
 * Jennifer Wynne Webber
 * Helen Weinzweig
 * Michael Wex
 * David Widdicombe
 * Randall Wiebe
 * Gina Wilkinson
 * Alan Williams
 * Kenneth T. Williams
 * Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory
 * Jonathan Wilson
 * Lance Woolaver
 * Rachel Wyatt
 * Betty Jane Wylie

Y

 * J. Michael Yates
 * David Yee (lady in the red dress)
 * Michael Yerxa
 * Marcus Youssef
 * Jean Yoon
 * d'bi young
 * David Young
 * Josée Yvon

title: List of Canadian playwrights


text:
Leslie Marmon Silko

Leslie Marmon Silko (born Leslie Marmon; born March 5, 1948) is an American writer. A woman of Laguna Pueblo descent, she is one of the key figures in the First Wave of what literary critic Kenneth Lincoln has called the Native American Renaissance.

Silko was a debut recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Grant in 1981. the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award in 1994 and the Robert Kirsch Award in 2020. She currently resides in Tucson, Arizona.

Early life
Leslie Marmon Silko was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico to Leland Howard Marmon, a noted photographer, and Mary Virginia Leslie, a teacher, and grew up on the Laguna Pueblo reservation. Her mixed-race family was of white American, Native American, and Mexican descent. She claims that her paternal grandmother, who was born in Montana, had a father whose family was "part Plains Indian" but that her grandmother "never knew" which tribe she was descended from, and that her grandmother's father was "half German" with an "Indian" mother. She claims that her maternal grandmother was part Cherokee "through her Grandfather Wood" who was from Kentucky.

Silko grew up on the edge of Laguna Pueblo society both literally – her family's house was at the edge of the Laguna Pueblo reservation – and figuratively, as she was not permitted to participate in various tribal rituals or join any of the Pueblo's religious societies. Her father's Laguna blood quantum was one-quarter and hers is one-eighth; the Laguna Pueblo blood quantum requirement for regular membership is one-quarter. She is not an enrolled citizen of the Laguna Pueblo. Calling herself a "mixed-breed", she had said that a sense of community is more important to Native identity than blood quantum: "That's where a person's identity has to come from, not from racial blood quantum levels." She has described her Marmon family history as "very controversial, even now." She is of Laguna descent through her great-grandfather, a Laguna woman named Maria Anaya/Analla, who was married to a white settler named Robert Gunn Marmon. According to Silko, the core theme of her writing is an attempt to make sense of what it means to be "neither white nor fully traditionally Indian." She identifies culturally as a Laguna woman, but does not claim to be representative of Native voices.

While her parents worked, Silko and her two sisters were cared for by their grandmother, Lillie Stagner, and great-grandmother, Helen Romero, both story-tellers. Silko learned much of the traditional stories of the Laguna people from her grandmother, whom she called A'mooh, her aunt Susie, and her grandfather Hank during her early years. As a result, Silko has always identified most strongly with her Laguna heritage, stating in an interview with Alan Velie, "I am of mixed-breed ancestry, but what I know is Laguna".

Silko's education included preschool through the fourth grade at Laguna BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) School and followed by Albuquerque Indian School (a private day school), the latter meant a day's drive by her father of 100 miles to avoid the boarding-school experience. She is a 1965 graduate of Highland High School. Silko went on to receive a BA in English Literature from the University of New Mexico in 1969; she briefly attended the University of New Mexico law school before pursuing her literary career full-time.

Early literary work
Silko garnered early literary acclaim for her short story "The Man to Send Rain Clouds," which was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Discovery Grant. The story continues to be included in anthologies.

During the years 1968 to 1974, Silko wrote and published many short stories and poems that were featured in her Laguna Woman (1974).

Her other publications, include: Laguna Woman: Poems (1974), Ceremony (1977), Storyteller (1981), and, with the poet James A. Wright, With the Delicacy and Strength of Lace: Letters Between Leslie Marmon Silko and James Wright (1985). Almanac of the Dead, a novel, appeared in 1991, and a collection of essays, Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit: Essays on Native American Life Today, was published in 1996.

Silko wrote a screenplay based on the comic book Honkytonk Sue, in collaboration with novelist Larry McMurtry, which has not been produced.

Literary relevance and themes
Throughout her career as a writer and teacher, she has remained grounded in the history-filled landscape of the Laguna Pueblo. Her experiences in the culture have fueled an interest to preserve cultural traditions and understand the impact of the past on contemporary life. A well-known novelist and poet, Silko's career has been characterized by making people aware of ingrained racism and white cultural imperialism, and a commitment to support women's issues. Her novels have many characters who attempt what some perceive a simple yet uneasy return to balance Native American traditions survivalism with the violence of modern America. The clash of civilizations is a continuing theme in the modern Southwest and of the difficult search for balance that the region's inhabitants encounter.

Her literary contributions are particularly important because they open up the Anglo-European prevailing definitions of the American literary tradition to accommodate the often underrepresented traditions, priorities, and ideas about identity that in a general way characterize many American Indian cultures and in a more specific way form the bedrock of Silko's Laguna heritage and experience.

During an interview in Germany in 1995, Silko shared the significance of her writings as a continuation of an existing oral tradition within the Laguna people. She specified that her works are not re-interpretations of old legends, but carry the same important messages as when they were told hundreds of years ago. Silko explains that the Laguna view on the passage of time is responsible for this condition, stating, “The Pueblo people and the indigenous people of the Americas see time as round, not as a long linear string. If time is round, if time is an ocean, then something that happened 500 years ago may be quite immediate and real, whereas something inconsequential that happened an hour ago could be far away.”

Ceremony
Leslie Marmon Silko's novel Ceremony was first published by Penguin in March 1977 to much critical acclaim.

The novel tells the story of Tayo, a wounded returning World War II veteran of mixed Laguna-white ancestry following a short stint at a Los Angeles VA hospital. He is returning to the poverty-stricken Laguna reservation, continuing to suffer from "battle fatigue" (shell-shock), and is haunted by memories of his cousin Rocky who died in the conflict during the Bataan Death March of 1942. His initial escape from pain leads him to alcoholism, but his Old Grandma and mixed-blood Navajo medicine-man Betonie help him through Native ceremonies to develop a greater understanding of the world and his place as a Laguna man.

Ceremony has been called a Grail fiction, wherein the hero overcomes a series of challenges to reach a specified goal; but this point of view has been criticized as Eurocentric, since it involves a Native American contextualizing backdrop, and not one based on European-American myths. Silko's writing skill in the novel is deeply rooted in the use of storytelling that pass on traditions and understanding from the old to the new. Fellow Pueblo poet Paula Gunn Allen criticized the book on this account, saying that Silko was divulging secret tribal knowledge reserved for the tribe, not outsiders.

Ceremony gained immediate and long-term acceptance when returning Vietnam War veterans took to the novel's theme of coping, healing and reconciliation between races and people that share the trauma of military actions. It was largely on the strength of this work that critic Alan Velie named Silko one of his Four Native American Literary Masters, along with N. Scott Momaday, Gerald Vizenor and James Welch.

Ceremony remains a literary work featured on college and university syllabi, and one of the few individual works by any author of Native American heritage to have received book-length critical inquiry.

Storyteller
In 1981, Silko released Storyteller, a collection of poems and short stories that incorporated creative writing, mythology, and autobiography, which garnered favorable reception as it followed in much the same poetic form as the novel Ceremony.

Delicacy and Strength of Lace
In 1986, Delicacy and Strength of Lace was released. The book is a collected volume of correspondence between Silko and her friend James Wright whom she met following the publication of Ceremony. The work was edited by Wright's wife, Ann Wright, and released after Wright's death in March 1980.

Almanac of the Dead
The novel Almanac of the Dead was published in 1991. This work took Silko ten years to complete and received mixed reviews. The vision of the book stretches over both American continents and includes the Zapatista Army of National Liberation revolutionaries, based in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, as just one group among a pantheon of characters. The theme of the novel, like that of Ceremony, focuses on the conflict between Anglo-Americans and Native Americans.

Several literary critics have been critical of the novel's depiction of homosexuality, based on the fact that the novel features male gay and bisexual characters who are variously abusive, sadistic, and cruel. Almanac of the Dead has not achieved the same mainstream success as its predecessor.

Sacred Water
In June 1993, Silko published a limited run of Sacred Water under Flood Plain Press, a self-printing venture by Silko. Each copy of Sacred Water is handmade by Silko using her personal typewriter combining written text set next to poignant photographs taken by the author.

Sacred Water is composed of autobiographical prose, poetry and pueblo mythology focusing on the importance and centrality of water to life.

Silko issued a second printing of Sacred Water in 1994 in order to make the work more accessible to students and academics although it was limited. This edition used printing methods suited for a greater production distribution.

Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit: Essays on Native American Life Today
Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit: Essays on Native American Life Today was published by Simon & Schuster in March 1997.

The work is a collection of essays on various topics; including an autobiographical essay of her childhood at Laguna Pueblo and the racism she faced as a mixed blood person; stark criticism directed at President Bill Clinton regarding his immigration policies; and praise for the development of and lamentation for the loss of the Aztec and Maya codices, along with commentary on Pueblo mythology.

As one reviewer notes, Silko's essays "encompass traditional storytelling, discussions of the power of words to the Pueblo, reminiscences on photography, frightening tales of the U.S. border patrol, historical explanations of the Mayan codices, and socio-political commentary on the relationship of the U.S. government to various nations, including the Pueblo".

The essay "Yellow Woman" concerns a young woman who becomes romantically and emotionally involved with her kidnapper, despite having a husband and children. The story is related to the traditional Laguna legend/myth of the Yellow Woman.

Rain
In 1997, Silko ran a limited number of handmade books through Flood Plain Press. Like Sacred Water, Rain was again a combination of short autobiographical prose and poetry inset with her photographs.

The short volume focused on the importance of rain to personal and spiritual survival in the Southwest.

Gardens In The Dunes
Gardens in the Dunes was published in 1999. The work weaves together themes of feminism, slavery, conquest and botany, while following the story of a young girl named Indigo from the fictional "Sand Lizard People" in the Arizona Territory and her European travels as a summer companion to an affluent White woman named Hattie.

The story is set against the back drop of the enforcement of Indian boarding schools, the California Gold Rush and the rise of the Ghost Dance Religion.

The Turquoise Ledge: A Memoir
In 2010, Silko released The Turquoise Ledge: A Memoir. Written using distinctive prose and overall structure influenced by Native American storytelling traditions, the book is a broad-ranging exploration not only of her Laguna Pueblo, Cherokee, Mexican and European family history but also of the natural world, suffering, insight, environmentalism and the sacred. The desert southwest setting is prominent. Although non-fiction, the stylized presentation is reminiscent of creative fiction.

Essays
A longtime commentator on Native American affairs, Silko has published many non-fictional articles on Native American affairs and literature.

Silko's two most famous essays are outspoken attacks on fellow writers. In "An Old-Fashioned Indian Attack in Two Parts", first published in Geary Hobson's collection The Remembered Earth (1978), Silko accused Gary Snyder of profiting from Native American culture, particularly in his collection Turtle Island, the name and theme of which was taken from Pueblo mythology.

In 1986, Silko published a review entitled "Here's an Odd Artifact for the Fairy-Tale Shelf", on Anishinaabe writer Louise Erdrich's novel The Beet Queen. Silko claimed Erdrich had abandoned writing about the Native American struggle for sovereignty in exchange for writing "self-referential", postmodern fiction.

In 2012, the textbook, Rethinking Columbus, which includes an essay by her, was banned by the Tucson Unified School District following a statewide ban on Ethnic and Cultural Studies.

Personal life
In 1965, she married Richard C. Chapman, and together, they had a son, Robert Chapman, before divorcing in 1969.

In 1971, she and John Silko were married. They had a son, Casimir Silko. This marriage also ended in divorce.

Poetry and short story collections

 * Laguna Women: Poems (1974)
 * Western Stories (1980)
 * Rain (1996)
 * Love poem and Slim Canyon (1996)
 * Oceanstory (2011) Published as a Kindle Single and available for digital download on Amazon.com
 * Love poem and Slim Canyon (1996)
 * Oceanstory (2011) Published as a Kindle Single and available for digital download on Amazon.com

Other works

 * The Turquoise Ledge: A Memoir (2010)
 * Delicacy And Strength of Lace Letters (1986)
 * "Indian Song: Survival", Chicago Review, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Spring, 1973), pp. 94–96
 * Delicacy And Strength of Lace Letters (1986)
 * "Indian Song: Survival", Chicago Review, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Spring, 1973), pp. 94–96
 * "Indian Song: Survival", Chicago Review, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Spring, 1973), pp. 94–96

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Leslie Marmon Silko


text:
List of Indigenous writers of the Americas

This is a list of notable writers who are Indigenous peoples of the Americas.

This list includes authors who are Alaskan Native, American Indian, First Nations, Inuit, Métis, and Indigenous peoples of Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America, and South America, as defined by the citizens of these Indigenous nations and tribes.

While Indigenous identity can at times be complex, inclusion in this list is based upon reliably-sourced citizenship in an Indigenous nation, based upon the legal definitions of, and recognition by, the relevant Indigenous community claimed by the individual. They must be documented as being claimed by that community. Writers such as Forrest Carter, Ward Churchill,  Jamake Highwater,   Joseph Boyden  and Grey Owl,  whose claims of Indigenous American descent have been factually disproved through genealogical research, are not included in this list.

A

 * Louise Abeita, Isleta Pueblo, 1926–2014
 * Janice Acoose, Sakimay (Saulteaux) First Nation-Métis, Canada, 1954–2020
 * Evan Adams, Sliammon First Nation Coast Salish, Canada, b. 1966
 * Howard Adams, Métis, Canada, 1921–2001
 * Freda Ahenakew, Ahtahkakoop Cree, Canada, 1932–2011
 * Humberto Ak'ab'al, K'iche' Maya, Guatemala, 1952–2019
 * Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm, Nawash Chippewa, Canada, b. 1965
 * Clarence Alexander, Gwichyaa Zhee Corporation Gwich’in, b. 1939
 * Robert Arthur Alexie, Gwich'in, Canada, 1957–2014
 * Sherman Alexie, Spokane/Coeur d'Alene, b. 1966
 * Gerald Taiaiake Alfred, Kahnawake Mohawk, Canada, b. 1964
 * Elsie Allen, Cloverdale Pomo, 1899–1990
 * Paula Gunn Allen, Laguna Pueblo descent, 1939–2008
 * Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxochitl, Texcocan, Mexico, ca. 1570–1648
 * Irma Alvarez Ccoscco, Quechua, Peru, b. 1980
 * Arthur Amiotte, Oglala Lakota, b. 1942
 * Ch'aska Anka Ninawaman, Quechua, Peru, b. 1973
 * William Apess, Pequot, 1798–1839
 * Annette Arkeketa, Otoe-Missouria/Muscogee
 * Jeannette C. Armstrong, Penticton Indian Band (Okanagan), Canada, b. 1948
 * José María Arguedas, Mestizo of Quechua-descent, Peru, 1911–1969
 * Joan Tavares Avant, Mashpee Wampanoag, b. 1940

B

 * Joséphine Bacon, Innu, Québec, Canada, b.1947
 * Marie Annharte Baker, Little Saskatchewan Ojibway, Canada, b. 1942
 * Dennis Banks, Leech Lake Ojibwe, 1937–2017
 * Keith Barker, Métis, Canada
 * Jim Barnes, Choctaw Nation descent, b. 1933, Poet Laureate of Oklahoma, 2009
 * James Bartleman, Chippewas of Rama First Nation, Canada, b. 1939
 * Tara Beagan, Nlakaʼpamux, Canada
 * Glecia Bear, Cree, Canada, 1912–1998
 * Shane Belcourt, Métis, Canada, b. 1972
 * Diane E. Benson, Tlingit, b. 1954
 * Gertrude Bernard (Anahareo), Mohawk, Canada, 1906–1986
 * Gloria Bird, Spokane, b. 1951
 * Sandra Birdsell, Métis, Canada, b. 1942
 * Andrew Blackbird, Odawa, ca. 1815–1908
 * Ned Blackhawk, Te-Moak Shoshone
 * Governor Blacksnake (Thaonawyuthe/Chainbreaker), Seneca, c. 1760–1859
 * Peter Blue Cloud, Mohawk, 1935–2011
 * Buffalo Bird Woman (Maxidiwiac), Hidatsa, ca. 1839–1932
 * Sherwin Bitsui, Navajo, b. 1975
 * Kimberly M. Blaeser, White Earth Ojibwe, b. 1955
 * Peter Blue Cloud, Mohawk, b. 1935
 * Selina Boan, Cree, Canada
 * Columpa Bobb, Tsleil Waututh/Nlaka'pamux, Canada, b. 1971
 * Elias Boudinot, Cherokee, 1740–1821, first Native American novelist (Poor Sarah, 1823)
 * Beth Brant, Bay of Quinte Mohawk, 1941–2015
 * Mary Brave Bird, Sicangu Lakota, 1953–2013
 * Ignatia Broker, Ottertail Pillager Band Ojibwe, United States, 1919–1987
 * Emily Ticasuk Ivanoff Brown, Inuk, (1904–1982)
 * Vee F. Browne, Navajo, b. 1956
 * Joseph Bruchac, Nulhegan Band, b. 1942
 * Louis F. Burns (Hulah Hihekah), Osage Nation, 1920–2012
 * Frank Christopher Busch, Cree, Canada

 * Jodi Byrd, Chickasaw Nation, United States

C

 * Cody Caetano, Pinaymootang Ojibway
 * Gregory Cajete, Santa Clara Pueblo
 * Cristina Calderón, Yaghan, Chile, 1928–2022, last speaker of the Yaghan language
 * Victoria Belcourt Callihoo (1861-1966) Métis historian
 * Adela Calva Reyes, Otomí, Mexico, 1967-2018
 * Maria Campbell, Métis, Canada, b. 1940
 * Nicola Campbell, Interior Salish Nleʔkepmx, Canada
 * Rob Capriccioso, Sault Ste. Marie Chippewa
 * Cliff Cardinal, Cree/Lakota
 * Harold Cardinal, Cree, 1945–2005
 * Pedro Cayuqueo, Mapuche, Chile, b. 1975
 * Aaron Albert Carr, Laguna Pueblo/Navajo, b. 1963
 * Marisol Ceh Moo, Maya, Mexico, b. 1968
 * Betsey Guppy Chamberlain, Wabanaki, ca. 1797–1886
 * Dean Chavers, Lumbee, b. 1942
 * Shirley Cheechoo, Cree, Canada, b. 1952
 * Elicura Chihuailaf Nahuelpán, Mapuche, Chile
 * Eddie Chuculate, Muscogee (Creek) Nation/Cherokee, b. 1978
 * Marie Clements, Métis, Canada, b. 1962
 * Susan Clements, Seneca/Mohawk-descent, United States, b. 1950
 * George Clutesi, Tseshaht First Nation, Canada, 1905–1988
 * Jacinto Collahuazo, Quechua, Ecuador
 * Thomas Commuck, Narragansett, 1805–1855
 * Robert J. Conley, Cherokee Nation, 1940–2014
 * Pascual Coña, Mapuche, Chile, late 1840s–1927
 * Ivonne Coñuecar, Mapuche, Chile, b. 1980
 * Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Crow Creek Lakota, b. 1930
 * Linda Coombs, Aquinnah Wampanoag
 * George Copway, Mississauga Ojibwa, Canada, 1818–1869
 * Jesse Cornplanter, Seneca, 1889–1957
 * Rupert Costo, Cahuilla, 1906–1989
 * Leonard Crow Dog, Oglala Lakota, 1942–2021
 * Briceida Cuevas, Maya, Mexico, b. 1969
 * David Cusick, Seneca, ca. 1780–ca. 1831

D

 * Joseph A. Dandurand, Kwantlen First Nation, Canada
 * Jenny L. Davis, Chickasaw Nation, United States
 * Nora Marks Dauenhauer, Tlingit, 1927–2017
 * Garcilaso de la Vega, 1539–1616, Mestizo/Quechua descent, Peru
 * Nora Thompson Dean, Touching Leaves Woman, Delaware Tribe of Indians, 1907–1984
 * Philip J. Deloria, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe
 * Ella Cara Deloria, Yankton Dakota/Standing Rock Sioux, 1889–1971
 * Vine Deloria, Jr., Yankton Dakota/Standing Rock Sioux, 1933–2005
 * Bonnie Devine, Serpent River First Nation, Canada
 * Cherie Dimaline, Métis, Canada
 * Edward Dozier, Santa Clara Pueblo, 1916–1971
 * Dawn Dumont, Okanese First Nation, Canada, b. 1973/1974
 * Yves Sioui Durand, Huron-Wendat Nation, Canada, b. 1951

E

 * Charles Eastman (Hakadah, Ohiyesa ), Santee Dakota, 1858–1939
 * Tommy Enuaraq, Inuk, Canada
 * Heid E. Erdrich, Turtle Mountain Ojibwe, b. 1963
 * Louise Erdrich, Turtle Mountain Ojibwe, b. 1954

F

 * Stephanie Fielding, Mohegan
 * Connie Fife, Cree
 * Waawaate Fobister, Grassy Meadows First Nation, Canada
 * Naomi Fontaine, Innu, Canada
 * Natasha Kanapé Fontaine, Innu, Canada
 * Lee Francis III, Laguna Pueblo descent, 1945–2003
 * Vera Francis, Passamaquoddy, b. 1958
 * Alice Masak French, Inuk, Canada, 1930–2013

G

 * Eric Gansworth, Onondaga
 * Garcilaso de la Vega (El Inca), Quechua, Peru, 1539–1616, first published in 1609
 * Andrew George, Jr., Wet'suwet'en First Nation, Canada b. 1963
 * Janice Gould, Maidu/Koyangk'auwi, 1949–2019
 * George R. D. Goulet, Métis, Canada, b. 1933
 * Fred Grove, Osage Nation/Oglala Lakota, 1913–2008
 * Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, Quechua, Peru, ca. 1535–after 1616

H

 * Janet Campbell Hale, Coeur d'Alene-Kootenay, 1946–2021
 * Terri Crawford Hansen, Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, b. 1953
 * Ann Meekitjuk Hanson, Inuk, Canada, b. 1946
 * Joy Harjo, Mvskoke, b. 1951
 * Suzan Shown Harjo, Mvskoke/Southern Cheyenne
 * LaDonna Harris, Comanche
 * Ernestine Hayes, Tlingit, b. 1945
 * Dakota Ray Hebert, Dene
 * James (Sakej) Youngblood Henderson, Chickasaw/Cheyenne, b. 1944
 * Gordon Henry, White Earth Ojibwe, b. 1955
 * Natalio Hernández, Nahua, Mexico, b. 1947
 * Hen-Toh (Bertrand N. O. Walker), Wyandotte, 1870–1927
 * Vi Hilbert, Upper Skagit, 1918–2008
 * Carol Anne Hilton Hesquiaht/Nuu-chah-nulth, Canada
 * Tomson Highway, Cree, Canada, b. 1951
 * Linda Hogan, Chickasaw Nation, b. 1947
 * Andrew Hope III, Tlingit, 1949–2008
 * John Christian Hopkins, Narragansett, b. 1960
 * George Horse-Capture, Gros Ventre, 1937–2013
 * Robert Houle, Saulteaux, Canada, b. 1947
 * LeAnne Howe, Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, b. 1951
 * Ralph Hubbard, Seneca, 1885–1980
 * Graciela Huinao, Huilliche, Chile, b. 1956
 * Beverly Hungry Wolf, Blackfoot Confederacy, Canada, b. 1950
 * Al Hunter, Rainy River Ojibwe, Canada

I

 * Alootook Ipellie, Inuk, Canada, 1951–2007
 * Peter Irniq, Inuk, Canada, b. 1947
 * Madeline Ivalu, Inuk, Canada

J

 * Michel Jean, Innu, Québec, Canada
 * Paulla Dove Jennings, Narragansett
 * Rita Joe, Mi'kmaq, Canada, 1932–2007
 * Jessica Johns, Cree, Canada
 * Emily Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake), Mohawk, Canada, 1861–1913
 * Aviaq Johnston, Inuk, Canada
 * Basil H. Johnston, Wasauksing Ojibway, Canada, 1929–2015
 * Stephen Graham Jones, Blackfeet Tribe, b. 1972
 * William Jones, Sac and Fox Nation, 1871–1909
 * Edith Josie, Gwich'in, Canada, 1921–2010
 * Hugo Jamioy Juagibioy, Kamentsa, Colombia
 * Betty Mae Tiger Jumper, Seminole Tribe of Florida, April 27, 1923 – January 14, 2011
 * Daniel Heath Justice, Cherokee Nation, Canada

K

 * Peter Kalifornsky, Dena'ina, 1911–1993
 * Joan Kane, Iñupiaq
 * Margo Kane, Cree/Saulteaux, Canada, b. 1951
 * An Antane-Kapesh, Innu, Québec, Canada, 1926-2004
 * Jacqueline Keeler, Navajo Nation citizen / Yankton Dakota descent
 * Maude Kegg, Mille Lacs Ojibwe, 1904–1999
 * William Kennedy, Métis, Canada, 1814–1890
 * Maurice Kenny, Mohawk, 1929–2016
 * Robin Wall Kimmerer, Citizen Potawatomi Nation, b. 1953
 * Jules Arita Koostachin, Cree, Canada
 * Michael Kusugak, Inuk, Canada, b. 1948
 * J. D. Kurtness, Innu, Québec, Canada, b. 1981

L

 * Francis La Flesche, Omaha/Ponca, 1857–1932
 * Susette La Flesche, Omaha/Ponca, 1854–1903
 * Carole Labarre, Innu, b. 1966
 * Winona LaDuke, White Earth Ojibwe, b. 1959
 * Carole LaFavor, Ojibwe
 * Joseph Laurent, Abenaki, 1839–1917
 * Ronald G. Lewis, Cherokee Nation, b. 1941
 * Georgina Lightning, Sampson First Nation Cree, Canada
 * Darcie Little Badger, Lipan Apache, b. 1987
 * William Harjo LoneFight, Muscogee/Natchez, b. 1966
 * Donna M. Loring, Penobscot, b. 1948
 * Kevin Loring, Nlaka'pamux, Canada Canada
 * Adrian C. Louis, Lovelock Paiute, 1946–2018
 * Phil Lucas, Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, 1942–2007
 * Henrik Lund, Kalaaleq, Greenland, 1875–1948

M

 * Matthew MacKenzie, Cree/Ojibwe/Métis, Canada
 * Terese Marie Mailhot, Nlaka'pamux, Canada
 * Wilma Mankiller, Cherokee Nation, 1945–2010
 * Larry Spotted Crow Mann, Nipmuc
 * Vera Manuel, Secwepemc, Canada /Ktunaxa, 1949–2010
 * Lee Maracle, Salish/Cree, Canada, 1950–2021
 * Joseph M. Marshall III, Brulé Lakota, b. ca. 1946
 * Henry Lorne Masta, Abenaki, 1853–unknown
 * John Joseph Mathews, Osage, ca. 1894–1979
 * Gerald McMaster, Siksika Nation/Red Pheasant First Nation, Canada, b. 1953
 * William D'Arcy McNickle, Salish Kootenai, 1904–1977
 * Joe Medicine Crow, Crow, 1913–2016
 * Rigoberta Menchú, K'iché Maya, Guatemala, b. 1959
 * Billy Merasty, Cree, Canada, b. 1960
 * Edmund Metatawabin, Cree, Canada
 * Tiffany Midge, Hunkpapa Lakota, b. 1965
 * Dylan Miner, Métis-descent, Canada-United States, b. 1976
 * Devon Mihesuah, Choctaw Nation, b. 1957
 * Deborah A. Miranda, Esselen/Chumash
 * Gabriela Mistral, Diaguita, Chile, 1889–1957
 * Lewis Mitchell, Passamaquoddy, 1847–1930
 * N. Scott Momaday, Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma, b. 1934
 * Carlos Montezuma, Yavapai, 1866–1923
 * Patricia Monture-Angus, Mohawk, Canada
 * Irvin Morris, Navajo, b. 1958
 * Daniel David Moses, Delaware, Canada, 1952–2020
 * Mountain Wolf Woman, Ho-Chunk, 1884–1960
 * Mourning Dove, Colville-Okanagan, 1888–1936
 * Daniel Munduruku, Munduruku, Brazil, b. 1964
 * Neddiel Muñoz Millalonco, Mapuche, Chile

N

 * Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk, Inuk, Canada
 * Nora Naranjo Morse, Santa Clara Pueblo, b. 1953
 * David Neel, Kwakwaka'wakw, Canada, b. 1960
 * Duane Niatum, Klallam, b. 1938
 * Mildred Noble, Naotkamegwanning Ojibway, Canada and United States, 1921–2008
 * Jim Northrup (Chibenashi), Fond du Lac Ojibwe, United States, 1943–2016
 * nila northSun, Shoshone/Red Lake Ojibwe, b. 1951

O

 * Jean O'Brien, White Earth Ojibwe, b. 1958
 * Samson Occom, Mohegan, 1723–1792, the first Native American known to publish in English
 * Louis Oliver (Little Coon or Wotkoce Okisce), 1904–1991, Muscogee, poet
 * Orpingalik, Netsilik Inuk, Canada
 * Simon J. Ortiz, Acoma Pueblo, b. 1941

P

 * Aaron Paquette, Métis, Canada
 * Arthur C. Parker, Seneca, 1881–1955
 * Daniel N. Paul, Mi'kmaq, Canada, b. 1938
 * Mihku Paul, Kingsclear First Nation Maliseet, Canada, b. 1958
 * Elise Paschen, Osage Nation
 * Markoosie Patsauq, Inuk, Canada
 * William S. Penn, Nez Perce, b. 1949
 * Robert L. Perea, Oglala Lakota/Mexican
 * Amanda Peters, Mi'kmaq
 * Paula Peters, Wampanoag
 * Lawrence "Pun" Plamondon", Grand Traverse Odawa-Ojibwe, b. 1946
 * Peter Pitseolak, Cape Dorset Inuk, Canada, 1902–1973
 * Simon Pokagon, Pokagon Potawatomi, ca. 1830–1899
 * Michelle Porter, Métis
 * Marie Mason Potts, Mountain Maidu, United States, 1895–1978
 * Alexander Posey, Muscogee (Creek) Nation, 1873–1908
 * Susan Power, Standing Rock Sioux, b. 1961
 * Pretty-Shield, Crow Nation, 1856–1944

Q

 * Rachel Qitsualik-Tinsley, Inuk, Canada
 * Quesalid, Kwakwaka'wakw, Canada
 * Taamusi Qumaq, Inuk, Canada, 1914-1993

R

 * Anselmo Raguileo Lincopil, Mapuche, Chile, 1922–1992
 * Avis Red Bear, Sioux journalist
 * Chief Henry Red Eagle, (Henry Perley), Maliseet, 1885–1972
 * Delphine Red Shirt, Oglala Lakota, b. 1957
 * Duke Redbird, Saugeen Ojibwe, Canada, b. 1939
 * Bill Reid, Haida, Canada, 1920–1998
 * Carter Revard, Osage Nation, 1931–2022
 * Lawney Reyes, Confederated Colville Tribes (Sinixt), b. 1951
 * Waubgeshig Rice, Wasauksing Ojibwe, Canada
 * Emily Riddle, Cree, Canada
 * Lynn Riggs, Cherokee, United States, 1899–1954
 * Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Aymara, Bolivia, b. 1949
 * David A. Robertson, Cree, Canada, b. 1977
 * Eden Robinson, Haisla/Heiltsuk, Canada, b. 1968
 * Henry Roe Cloud, Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, 1884–1950
 * John Rollin Ridge (Yellow Bird), Cherokee, 1827–1867
 * Will Rogers, Cherokee Nation, 1879–1935
 * Will Rogers, Jr., Cherokee Nation, 1911–1993
 * Wendy Rose, Hopi/Miwok, b. 1948
 * Ian Ross, Métis, Canada, b. 1960
 * Armand Garnet Ruffo, Chapleau Ojibwe, Canada, b. 1955
 * Steve Russell, Cherokee Nation, 1947–2021

S

 * Ray St. Germain, Métis, Canada
 * Carol Lee Sanchez, Laguna Pueblo descent
 * William Sanders, Cherokee Nation, 1942–2017
 * Greg Sarris, Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, b. 1952
 * Madeline Sayet, Mohegan, b. 1989
 * Katherine Siva Saubel, Los Coyotes Cahuilla, 1920–2011
 * Gregory Scofield, Métis, Canada, b. 1966
 * Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, Sault Ste. Marie Ojibwe, 1800–1841, first Native woman to publish
 * Bev Sellars, Xat'sull, Canada
 * James Sewid, Kwakwaka'wakw, Canada, 1913–1988
 * María Clara Sharupi Jua, Shuar, Ecuador, b. 1964
 * Charles Norman Shay, Penobscot, b. 1924
 * Paula Sherman, Ardoch Algonquin First Nation, Canada
 * Kim Shuck, Cherokee Nation
 * Angela Sidney, Tagish, Canada, 1902–1991
 * Leslie Marmon Silko, Laguna Pueblo descent, b. 1948
 * Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Alderville First Nation, Canada
 * Jocelyn Sioui, Huron-Wendat Nation, Québec, Canada
 * Ruby Slipperjack, Eabametoong Ojibwe, Canada, b. 1952
 * Cynthia Leitich Smith, Muscogee Creek, b. 1967
 * Monique Gray Smith, Cree/Lakota, Canada
 * Paul Chaat Smith, Comanche/Choctaw
 * Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve, Brulé Lakota, b. 1933
 * Donald Soctomah, Passamaquoddy
 * Loren Spears, Narragansett
 * Luther Standing Bear, Oglala Lakota, ca. 1868–1939
 * Angela Sterritt, Gitxsan, Canada
 * James Thomas Stevens, Akwesasne Mohawk, b. 1966
 * Virginia Stroud, United Keetoowah Band Cherokee/Muscogee, b. 1951
 * Madonna Swan, Cheyenne River Lakota, 1928–1993
 * Denise Sweet, White Earth Ojibwe, Poet Laureate of Wisconsin 2004
 * James Schoppert, Tlingit, 1947–1992

T

 * Gladys Tantaquidgeon, Mohegan, 1899–2005
 * Luci Tapahonso, Navajo, b. 1953
 * Drew Hayden Taylor, Curve Lake Ojibwe, Canada, b. 1962
 * Ningeokuluk Teevee, Cape Dorset Inuk, Canada, b. 1963
 * Clayton Thomas-Müller, Cree, Canada
 * Lucy Thompson, Yurok 1853–1932, first Indigenous Californian woman to be published
 * Russell Thornton, Cherokee Nation, b. 1942
 * Shannon Thunderbird, Tsimshian First Nation, Canada
 * Susette LaFlesche Tibbles, Omaha/Ponca/Iowa, 1854–1903
 * George Tinker, Osage Nation
 * Natalia Toledo, Zapotec, Mexico, b. 1968
 * Raymond D. Tremblay, Métis, Canada
 * David Treuer, Leech Lake Ojibwe, b. 1970
 * John Trudell, Santee Dakota, 1946–2015
 * Demetrio Túpac Yupanqui, Quechua, Peru, 1923–2018
 * Mark Turcotte, Turtle Mountain Chippewa
 * Richard Twiss, Brulé Lakota, 1954–2013
 * Arielle Twist, Cree
 * E. Donald Two-Rivers, Rainy River Ojibwa, 1945–2008
 * Froyla Tzalam, Mopan Maya, Belize

U

 * Uvavnuk, Iglulik Inuk, Canada

V

 * Richard Van Camp, Tli Cho, Canada, b. 1971
 * Gerald Vizenor, White Earth Ojibwe, b. 1934

W

 * Richard Wagamese, Ojibwe, Canada
 * Bertrand N. O. Walker (Hen-Toh), Wyandotte, 1870–1927
 * Velma Wallis, Athabaskan, b. 1960
 * Juan Wallparrimachi, Quechua, Bolivia, 1793–1814
 * Anna Lee Walters, Pawnee/Otoe-Missouria, b. 1946
 * William Whipple Warren, Ojibwe, 1825–1853
 * Clyde Warrior, Ponca, 1939–1968
 * Waziyatawin (Angela Wilson), Wahpetunwan Dakota
 * Matthew James Weigel, Denesuline/Métis
 * James Welch, Blackfeet/Gros Ventre, 1940–2003
 * Gwen Westerman, Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota Oyate /Cherokee Nation
 * Tom Whitecloud, Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe, 1914–1972
 * Mary Louise Defender Wilson, Dakota/Hidatsa, b. 1930
 * Sarah Winnemucca (Thocmentony), Northern Paiute, ca. 1844–1891
 * Elizabeth Woody, Navajo/Wasco-Wishram, b. 1957
 * Muriel Hazel Wright, Choctaw Nation, 1889–1975

Y

 * William S. Yellow Robe, Jr., Fort Peck Assiniboine, 1962–2021
 * Annie York, Spuzzum First Nation Nlaka'pamux, Canada, 1904–1991
 * Ray Young Bear, Meskwaki, b. 1950
 * Alfred Young Man, Chippewa-Cree, Canada and United States, b. 1948

Z

 * Leckott Zamora, Wichi, b. 1948
 * Ofelia Zepeda, Tohono O'odham, b. 1952
 * Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin), Yankton Dakota-Standing Rock Sioux, 1876–1938
 * Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel, Mohegan, b. 1960


text:
Apollo 18 (album)

Apollo 18 is the fourth studio album by American alternative rock duo They Might Be Giants. It was released in 1992 through Elektra Records and was named after the cancelled Apollo 18 mission that was scheduled to have followed Apollo 17. The album was also associated with International Space Year, for which They Might Be Giants were declared the official "musical ambassadors" by NASA.

The album marked the first conscious effort by John Linnell and John Flansburgh to branch out of their early sound, opting for more traditional rock rhythms and fuller arrangements. The duo adopted a backing band with live drums during the supporting tour. It was their last album recorded as a duo, and the band expanded to include a regular rhythm guitarist, bass player and saxophone player for their subsequent releases. Apollo 18 also includes the "Fingertips" suite, a series of twenty-one short songs, most under thirty seconds long. The album generated three singles, "The Statue Got Me High", "The Guitar (The Lion Sleeps Tonight)" and "I Palindrome I", although only the first charted.

The album received mostly positive reviews from music critics, with many commending the band for making music with a darker tone. However, the album was criticized for lacking a standout lead single. Commercially, the album was not as successful as Flood (1990), peaking at number 99 on the Billboard 200 and spending only six weeks on that chart. In addition, some fans were upset that Flansburgh and Linnell opted to use a backing band for the album's tour.

Recording and production

After the major success of Flood (1990), Elektra sought out Elvis Costello to produce Apollo 18; however, John Linnell and John Flansburgh elected to produce the album themselves as they had originally planned. Prior to recording, the band upgraded many of their instruments; Flansburgh purchased a Marshall amp and Linnell bought several new saxophones. The album was recorded at The Magic Shop in New York City in approximately ten weeks. Although the band recorded Apollo 18 primarily as a duo, its production is musically sparser than that of previous releases. The album's associated tour, the Don't Tread on the Cut-Up Snake World Tour 1992, was the band's first to utilize a live backing band, rather than a tape deck playing backing tracks. Linnell later noted that this led to much more complicated and deliberate rehearsals.

Style and composition
The music found on Apollo 18 is slightly darker in tone and mood than the songs found on Flood. When it came to writing songs for the album, Linnell and Flansburgh used "old standbys", such as producing harmonies through improvisation and generating melodies by sampling sounds in varying cycles. However, according to the album's press release, Flansburgh and Linnell both sought to expand their horizons and incorporate new sounds and "extreme song arrangements".

The album's opening track, "Dig My Grave", has been described by Parry Gettelman of the Orlando Sentinel as "an angry, fuzzed-out rocker". The vocals for the track were recorded through a guitar fuzz box in order to distort them. The circular "I Palindrome I" features a word-by-word palindrome in one of its verses: "'Son, I am able', she said, 'though you scare me.' 'Watch', said I. 'Beloved", I said, 'watch me scare you, though.' Said she, 'Able am I, son.'" "She's Actual Size" was written by Flansburgh after he contemplated the imagery of someone viewing a departing person in a mirror; he felt that the symbolism was a "really succinct way of talking about leaving somebody behind". The band later expressed disappointment with the "definitive" version featured on this album, largely because the song continued to develop as the band played it live. Flansburgh called the album version "timid" and noted that "later performance versions of [the song] have so much more spirit than the recorded version"; a version would later appear on the band's live album Severe Tire Damage. Although Linnell and Flansburgh usually write songs individually, "My Evil Twin" was an example of the two collaborating. Linnell wrote the musical structure of the song, rendering it as a MIDI file, and Flansburgh then wrote the melody and the lyrics. "Mammal" discusses various members of the titular vertebrate class, and, according to Linnell, poetically explores the fact that "all mammals have hair at some stage in their development". In an interview with Wired magazine, Linnell revealed that most of the scientific information in the song was gathered from an encyclopedia.

The first single released from the album was "The Statue Got Me High". The titular lyrics originally started out with the line "The apple of my eye...". but Linnell soon conceived the line that would become the title, and he was amused at the juxtaposition of a statue—something "utterly immobile and … in the past"—completely "blowing somebody's mind". "Spider" is an eclectic song that was made when Flansburgh and Linnell were experimenting with a sampler. Linnell provided almost all of the voices, save for the line "must stop!", which was spoken by Flansburgh. Flansburgh himself was responsible for the bongos, horns and various sound effects. The second single, "The Guitar (The Lion Sleeps Tonight)", was spawned from a jam session of the Tokens song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". The song was also originally intended to simply be titled "The Guitar". Because of the legal ramifications of including the "Lion Sleeps Tonight" motif, Elektra required the band to add the name of the original song to the title. The song features Laura Cantrell on the chorus. "Dinner Bell" references Ivan Pavlov, and his experimentation in classical conditioning by using a dinner bell to cause his dog to salivate. According to Rolling Stone, "Narrow Your Eyes" is a "touching breakup song that pays vocal tribute to The Beatles and The Four Seasons". Spin magazine called the song "the most direct lyrically and simplest musically." The first line of "See the Constellation"—described by Rolling Stone as "a psychedelic/New Wave potion"—references railroad tracks and was inspired by a promotional photo of an Elektra recording artist who was resting on tracks. Flansburgh was struck by the "contrary elements of the image", and he wondered, "How relaxing can that kind of rest be unless you’ve given up on everything else?"

"Fingertips" is a series of 21 short tracks ranging in duration from four to 61 seconds, totaling 4:35. Referring to these tracks, the album's liner notes include the message "the indexing of this disc is designed to complement the Shuffle Mode of modern CD players". According to John Flansburgh, listening to the album on shuffle made a collage of songs, with the short fingertips interspersed among tracks of regular length. Arnold Aronson argued that this element made the album "a stunning declaration of post-modernism" because of its heavy use of "rupture, dissociation, and pastiche". The songs were written to resemble short fragments of pop songs. The format was inspired by advertisements for collections of music, which only included samples of choruses. The "Fingertips" suite features vocal cameos from Peter Stampfel, who founded The Holy Modal Rounders, and Brian Dewan, who crafted the shrine that appeared on They Might Be Giants' 1988 album Lincoln. Because of a mastering error, the European and Australian issues of the CD include "Fingertips" as one continuous track, though on the US edition it is correctly split into 21 tracks. (This concept of including extremely short songs on an album was later somewhat recycled for the band's 16th album, Nanobots, which contains twenty-five songs, nine of which run under one minute each.  ) The album concludes with "Space Suit", a jazz-influenced song with synthesizer elements. The song had been written to make use of chords that Flansburgh had learned under the tutelage of Jack DeSalvo. The song originally was titled "I'll Remember 3rd Street", a nod to its "jazzy origins", but once the keyboard elements were added, the band decided to give it a name that was more "spacey".

Title and packaging
The title of the album references NASA's aborted Apollo 18 mission, originally planned to land in the moon's Schroter's Valley in February 1972. The album's cover depicts a giant squid locked in combat with a sperm whale in space, using graphics that the Johns came across while searching the NASA Archive Center for images to use in media art surrounding the album. The Dial-A-Song phone number is misprinted as 718-963-6962 on the back of the album, a number that would instead dial a warehouse. The album liner notes and artwork for the album's singles include a number of photographs from NASA, and the packaging was designed by John Flansburgh, under the pseudonym "Rolf Conant", with Barbara Lipp.

Promotion
Between 1992 and 1993, Bo Orloff, the band's assistant manager, sent out various informational updates via email to the band's mailing list. These included a full track listing prior to the album's release, as well as a press release and biography of the band. The bulletins also included information on the album's associated tour.

The band appeared as a musical guest on numerous talk shows to promote Apollo 18. "The Guitar (The Lion Sleeps Tonight)" and "The Statue Got Me High" were performed on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and "I Palindrome I" on Late Night with David Letterman. Their appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on 19 May 1992 was the television debut of They Might Be Giants' new backing band.

International Space Year

The band became associated with the International Space Year (ISY), designated as 1992 by the United Nations to promote peaceful and collaborative space exploration, when Linnell and Flansburgh were searching the NASA Archive Center for appropriate photographs and visual materials for the album artwork. Staff members at the NASA facility took notice of the duo and inquired about their research. Linnell responded that they "were in this band, we're making this record, and we're going to start touring next year...They were particularly interested in that, because they said that 1992 was ISY. It was the first time we ever heard of that, but they said because we were a band going to be touring around the world in 1992 they wondered if we wanted to be spokesband for the ISY. So we said why not?"

The band was soon declared the official "musical ambassadors" for the year, although, according to Linnell, it was more of an informal arrangement. The band had originally planned to create short videos called "Space Minutes", which would have aired on an unspecified cable television station that was affiliated with ISY, but the plans never came to fruition. In support of the designation, the ISY logo was included on the back cover of the album. The band was scheduled for concerts to endorse ISY, and mentioned in promotional material from NASA, which headed the celebration in the United States. Commenting on the success of the designation of International Space Year, however, Linnell pointed out that he "[didn't] think most people have heard that this is International Space Year".

Don't Tread on the Cut-Up Snake World Tour
In support of Apollo 18, They Might Be Giants embarked on a tour across the United States, Europe and Asia. The tour was named the "Don't Tread on the Cut-Up Snake World Tour 1992", a reference to the Gadsden flag and the "Join, or Die" cartoon, with the "world tour" affix appended by Elektra Records. The band's largest tour up to that point, spanning the length of 1992, the Don't Tread on the Cut-Up Snake tour was also associated with ISY. Although they were initially hesitant about using live backing musicians, it was also the first tour for which Linnell and Flansburgh were joined by a live band, consisting of a rhythm section and saxophonist. They were encouraged to adopt the larger touring outfit by their Elektra A&R representative, Susan Drew. The band also expanded to include a regular rhythm guitarist, bass player and saxophone player for their subsequent studio recordings.

The band's "O Tannenbaum" single was recorded during a sound check on the tour. The track would later reappear on the They Might Be Giants In...Holidayland EP, released in 2001.

Promotional video
A short video promoting Apollo 18 was produced by Elektra Records, in the vein of the previous Flood promo. In the video, graphic and video illustrations of certain songs are presented, in addition to samples of some of the songs. The video is arranged to resemble a traditional slide show presentation. The video also introduced the concept of the three "Power Spheres", from which the compilation album A User's Guide to They Might Be Giants: Melody, Fidelity, Quantity (2005) would take its subtitle.

Critical reception
Apollo 18 garnered positive reviews from critics. Writing for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine gave the album 4 out of 5 stars and stated that it was more "consistent" than predecessors, making note of its darker tone. However, Erlewine also felt that the album was "lacking a standout single". Robert Christgau, who assigned the album an A−, praised the first five tracks especially, asserting that the remaining 33 were more experimental in nature. Christgau acclaimed the album's melodic attributes while stating that the lyrics were pleasant but "meaningless". Ira Robbins, reviewing for Rolling Stone, gave Apollo 18 4 out of 5 stars. Similar to Christgau, Robbins called the lyrics "whimsy" and said that they were not too complex to weigh down melodies. Robbins also praised the album's eclecticism, observing that Turn Around' mimics Forties swing; the funky bass groove of 'The Guitar' interpolates a rewrite of 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight', fetchingly sung by Laura Cantrell. Another wry science lesson, 'See the Constellation', mixes a psychedelic/New Wave potion for a bouncy space trip." Robbins was critical of the disorganized "Fingertips" selections. A review by Craig Tomashoff, published in People, lauded the variety found in "Fingertips". Tomashoff also made note of the wide vocabulary employed in the lyrics (citing, specifically, "Turn Around" and "I Palindrome I"), concluding that the album was "totally cool".

Consumer response
On April 11, 1992, Apollo 18 peaked at number 99 on the Billboard 200. It spent six weeks on that chart. "The Statue Got Me High", the first single from the album, peaked at number 24 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart on March 21, 1992, and spent eight weeks on the chart. The album's other singles failed to chart.

Apollo 18 debuted on the Australian ARIA albums chart at number 60 on April 26, 1992, before peaking at number 59 the following week; it spent 6 weeks in the top 100.

Although Apollo 18 received a positive response from consumers and critics, some fans were upset that the duo of Linnell and Flansburgh had been augmented to include a full band for the album's tour. In rebuttal, some fans stopped attending live concerts, even taking the aggressive approach of trying to discourage others from entering venues for shows. Despite these reactions, the live band was generally well received. In The New York Times review of a contemporaneous live show, Jon Pareles observed that the band was "just as tricky as ever", and still delighted its audience. They Might Be Giants continues to record and tour with a full backing band.

Personnel

 * They Might Be Giants
 * John Flansburgh – songwriting, vocals, guitars, bass, synth bass, programming, horns, percussion, sound effects
 * John Linnell – vocals, accordion, keyboards, saxophones, clarinet, programming, synth bass

 * Additional musicians
 * Mark Feldman – violin on tracks 1 and 11
 * Garo Yellin – cello on track 1
 * Jim Thomas – drums on track 3
 * Laura Cantrell – vocals on track 8
 * Julie Cohen – vocals on track 11
 * Peter Stampfel – banjo, vocals on tracks 18 and 36
 * Nicholas Hill – vocals on track 19
 * Elma Mayer – vocals on track 20 and 25
 * Brian Dewan – vocals on track 22 and 27
 * Amy Allison – vocals on track 30

 * Production
 * They Might Be Giants – producer
 * Edward Douglas IV – engineer
 * Bruce Calder – engineer
 * Brian Pollack – engineer
 * UE Nastasi – engineer on Fingertips
 * Patrick Dillett – mixing on "Fingertips"
 * Paul Angelli – recording; mixing on "Fingertips"

 * Artwork
 * John Flansburgh – design
 * Marjorie Galen – art assistance
 * Ralph Morse – photography
 * Don Uhrbrock – photography
 * J. Otto Seibold – photography
 * Fred Tomaselli – sculpture

Chart performance
Album

Singles

Release history
Apollo 18 was released on CD and cassette in the United States, Australia, and Canada and on CD, LP and cassette formats in European markets by Elektra Records. In 2013, a two-part CD compilation collected Apollo 18 and some contemporary B-sides along with the band's other Elektra studio albums and surrounding material. The album was also released on LP in the United States and Canada by Asbestos Records in 2014 as part of a series of LP reissues spanning They Might Be Giants' period on the Elektra label.

title: Apollo 18 (album)


text:
Honorable Service Lapel Button

The Honorable Service Lapel Button, colloquially called "Ruptured Duck" by the members of the military, was a lapel button awarded for honorable Federal military service between 1925 and 1946. The award, designed by Anthony de Francisci, was issued for wear on the left lapel of civilian clothing upon discharge.

The U.S. departments of War and the Navy issued the lapel button to eligible servicemen and women upon discharge. It was made of gilt brass, except during metal shortages during which it was made of gilt plastic. Service members who received the plastic version were later allowed to trade it in for the brass version.

Appearance
The button is approximately 7/16 inch in height and 5/8 inch in width. A cloth lozenge depicting the gold colored button design was also issued. The lozenge was approximately 1.5 inches in height and 3 inches in width with the ring design being approximately 1 inch in diameter. Honorably discharged veterans wore the lapel pin on the left lapel of civilian clothing and the lozenge was sewn onto the right breast of the dress uniform that they wore when being discharged.

Even though it depicts an eagle, the design of the eagle seems to depict its breast bursting through the button as though it has ruptured, and the eagle was believed by some to have been so poorly designed as to resemble a duck rather than an eagle. The term "ruptured duck" was coined to refer to it on that basis.

Honorable Discharge Emblem
The Honorable Discharge Emblem, designed to be worn on the military uniform, served as proof the wearer was an honorably discharged veteran returning from service during World War II. It was unofficially utilized as an identifier to railroad, bus, and other transportation companies who offered free or subsidized transportation to returning veterans.

During World War II, enlisted members of the armed forces were forbidden to possess civilian clothing unless they were under specific orders to do so. This not only made desertion more difficult, but also ensured that any captured service member would be treated as a prisoner of war under the rules of war. (Soldiers captured in combat zones in possession of civilian clothing were liable to be treated as spies and summarily executed.) In pre-war conditions, discharged veterans typically donned civilian clothing when returning home, but this was logistically difficult during wartime and immediate post-war America. Approximately 16 million men and women served in the uniformed services during the crisis, most of whom were scheduled to be discharged within a short period of time during the general demobilization at the end of the war. Clothing was already in short supply due to cloth rationing, and the immediate clothing needs of millions of returning veterans threatened to crash an already overtaxed system. The Honorable Discharge Emblem, embroidered onto a cloth lozenge and sewn over the right pocket of the military uniform, allowed the veteran to continue to wear the uniform for up to 90 days subsequent to discharge.

Legacy
World War II veterans wore the Honorable Service Lapel Button on the left lapel of civilian clothing many years after the war. It also appeared on a U.S. postage stamp honoring World War II veterans and was widely used as a popular symbol of their service. Usage of the term "ruptured duck" later expanded to refer to servicemen wearing the emblem, as in "that ruptured duck is flying space-available." The term later came into use to describe someone or something moving quickly, presumably because returning servicemen were usually in a great hurry to return to their homes in the United States.

title: Honorable Service Lapel Button


text:
Gerald Vizenor

Gerald Robert Vizenor (born 1934) is an American writer and scholar, and an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, White Earth Reservation. Vizenor also taught for many years at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was Director of Native American Studies. With more than 30 books published, Vizenor is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, and Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico.

Early life
Gerald Vizenor was born to a mother who was Swedish-American and a father who was Anishinaabe. When he was less than two years old, his father was murdered in a homicide that was never solved. He was raised by his mother and paternal Anishinaabe grandmother, along with a succession of paternal uncles, in Minneapolis and on the White Earth Reservation. His mother's partner acted as his informal stepfather and primary caregiver. Following that man's death in 1950, Vizenor lied about his age and at 15 entered the Minnesota National Guard.

Honorably discharged before his unit went to Korea, Vizenor joined the army two years later. He served with occupation forces in Japan, with that nation was still struggling to recover from the vast destruction of the nuclear attacks that ended World War II. During this period, he began to learn about the Japanese poetic form of haiku. Later he wrote Hiroshima Bugi (2004), what he called his "kabuki novel."

Returning to the United States in 1953, Vizenor took advantage of G.I. Bill funding to complete his undergraduate degree at New York University. He followed this with postgraduate study at Harvard University and the University of Minnesota, where he also undertook graduate teaching. After returning to Minnesota, he married and had a son.

Activism
After teaching at the university, between 1964 and 1968, Vizenor worked as a community advocate. During this time he served as director of the American Indian Employment and Guidance Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which brought him into close contact with numerous Native Americans from reservations. Many found it difficult to live in the city, and struggled against white racism and cheap alcohol.

This period is the subject of his short-story collection Wordarrows: Whites and Indians in the New Fur Trade, some of which was inspired by his experiences. His work with homeless and poor Natives may have been the reason Vizenor looked askance at the emerging American Indian Movement (AIM), seeing radical leaders such as Dennis Banks and Clyde Bellecourt as being more concerned with personal publicity than the "real" problems faced by American Indians.

Vizenor began working as a staff reporter on the Minneapolis Tribune, quickly rising to become an editorial contributor. He investigated the case of Thomas James White Hawk, convicted of a 1967 Vermillion, South Dakota murder and sentenced to death. Vizenor's writings on the case explored the nature of justice in a society dealing with colonized peoples. His work was credited with enabling White Hawk to have his death sentence commuted.

During this period Vizenor coined the phrase "cultural schizophrenia" to describe the state of mind of many Natives, who he considered torn between Native and White cultures. His investigative journalism into American Indian activists revealed drug dealing, personal failings, and failures of leadership among some of the movement's leaders. As a consequence of his articles, he was personally threatened.

Academic career
Beginning teaching full-time at Lake Forest College, Illinois, Vizenor was appointed to set up and run the Native American Studies program at Bemidji State University. Later he became professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis (1978–1985). He later satirized the academic world in some of his fiction. For example, in "The Chair of Tears", in Earthdivers. During this time he also served as a visiting professor at Tianjin University, China.

Vizenor worked and taught for four years at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he was also Provost of Kresge College. He had an endowed chair for one year at the University of Oklahoma. Vizenor next was appointed as a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He is professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico.

Vizenor was influenced by the French post-modernist intellectuals, particularly Jacques Derrida and Jean Baudrillard.

Fiction
Vizenor has published collections of haiku, poems, plays, short stories, translations of traditional tribal tales, screenplays, and many novels. He has been named as a member of the literary movement which Kenneth Lincoln dubbed the Native American Renaissance, a flourishing of literature and art beginning in the mid-20th century.

His first novel, Darkness in Saint Louis Bearheart (1978), later revised as Bearheart: The Heirship Chronicles (1990), brought him immediate attention. One of the few science fiction novels written by a Native American, it portrayed a procession of tribal pilgrims through a surreal, dystopian landscape of an America suffering an environmental apocalypse brought on by white greed for oil. Simultaneously postmodern and deeply traditional, inspired by N. Scott Momaday's pioneering works, Vizenor drew on poststructuralist theory and Anishinaabe trickster stories to portray a world in the grip of what he called "terminal creeds" – belief systems incapable of change. In one of the most noted and controversial passages, the character Belladonna Darwin Winter-Catcher proclaims that Natives are better and purer than whites. She is killed with poisoned cookies, purportedly for her promoting racial separatism.

In Vizenor's subsequent novels, he used a shifting and overlapping cast of trickster figures in settings ranging from China to White Earth Reservation to the University of Kent. Frequently quoting European philosophers such as Umberto Eco, Roland Barthes and Jean Baudrillard, Vizenor has written a fiction that is allusive, humorous and playful, but deeply serious in portraying the state of Native America. He has refused to romanticize the figure of the Native and opposes continued oppression. Vizenor's major theme is that the idea of "Indian" as one people was an "invention" of European invaders. Before Columbus arrived, no one defined Indian as other; there were only the indigenous peoples of various tribes (such as Anishinaabe or Dakota). (They defined "other" among themselves, often divided by languages and associated cultures.)

To deconstruct the idea of "Indianness," Vizenor uses strategies of irony and Barthesian jouissance. For instance, in the lead-up to Columbus Day in 1992, he published the novel, The Heirs of Columbus, in which Columbus is portrayed as a Mayan Indian trying to return home to Central America. In Hotline Healers, he claims that Richard Nixon, the American president who he said did more for American Indians than any other in restoring sovereign rights and supporting self-determination, did so as part of a deal in exchange for traditional "virtual reality" technology.

Non-fiction
Vizenor has written several studies of Native American affairs, including Manifest Manners and Fugitive Poses. He has edited several collections of academic work related to Native American writing. He is the founder-editor of the American Indian Literature and Critical Studies series at the University of Oklahoma Press, which has provided an important venue for critical work on and by Native writers.

In his own studies, Vizenor has worked to deconstruct the semiotics of Indianness. His title, Fugitive Poses is derived from Vizenor's assertion that the term Indian is a social-science construction that replaces native peoples, who become absent or "fugitive". Similarly, the term, "manifest manners," refers to the continued legacy of Manifest Destiny. He wrote that native peoples were still bound by "narratives of dominance" that replace them with "Indians". In place of a unified "Indian" signifier, he suggests that Native peoples be referred to by specific tribal identities, to be properly placed in their particular tribal context, just as most Americans would distinguish among the French, Poles, Germans and English.

In order to cover more general Native studies, Vizenor suggests using the term, "postindian," to convey that the disparate, heterogeneous tribal cultures were "unified" and could be addressed en masse only by Euro-American attitudes and actions towards them. He has also promoted the neologism of "survivance", a cross between the words "survival" and "resistance." He uses it to replace "survival" in terms of tribal peoples. He coined it to imply a process rather than an end, as the ways of tribal peoples continue to change (as do the ways of others). He also notes that the survival of tribal peoples as distinct from majority cultures, is based in resistance.

He continues to criticize both Native American nationalism and Euro-American colonial attitudes.

Honors
Both his fiction and academic studies have contributed to his being honored as a major Anishinaabe and American intellectual and writer.
 * 1983, Film-in-the-Cities Award, Sundance Festival
 * 1984, Best American Indian Film, San Francisco Film Festival
 * 1986, New York Fiction Collective Award
 * 1988, American Book Award for
 * 1988, New York Fiction Collective Prize
 * 1989, Artists Fellowship in Literature, California Arts Council, 1989
 * 1990, PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award
 * 1996, PEN Excellence Award
 * 2001, Lifetime Achievement Award, Native Writers' Circle of the Americas
 * 2005, Distinguished Achievement Award, Western Literature Association
 * 2005, Distinguished Minnesotan, Bemidji State University
 * 2011, MELUS Lifetime Achievement Award, 2011.
 * 2011, American Book Award for Shrouds of White Earth (2011).
 * 2020, Lifetime Achievement Award, Paul Bartlett Re Peace Prize
 * 2021, Honorary Curator, American Haiku Archives

Fiction

 * Shrouds of White Earth (SUNY P)
 * Father Meme (University of New Mexico Press)
 * Hiroshima Bugi: Atomu 57 (Nebraska UP)
 * Chancers (Oklahoma UP)
 * Hotline Healers: An Almost Browne Novel (Wesleyan UP)
 * Bearheart: The Heirship Chronicles (Minnesota UP) (revised version of Darkness in Saint Louis Bearheart)
 * The Heirs of Columbus (Wesleyan UP)
 * Griever: An American Monkey King in China (Minnesota UP)
 * The Trickster of Liberty: Tribal Heirs to a Wild Baronage (Emergent Literatures)
 * From the section "Earthdivers in Higher Education" (pp. 3–67):
 * Landfill Meditation: Crossblood Stories (Wesleyan UP)
 * Dead Voices: Natural Agonies in the New World (University of Oklahoma Press)
 * Landfill Meditation: Crossblood Stories (Wesleyan UP)
 * Dead Voices: Natural Agonies in the New World (University of Oklahoma Press)

Non-fiction

 * Thomas James Whitehawk: Investigative Narrative in the Trial, Capital Punishment, and Commutation of the Death Sentence of Thomas James Whitehawk (Four Winds Press, 1968)
 * Touchwood : A Collection of Ojibway Prose (Many Minnesotas Project, No 3) (New Rivers Press)
 * The People Named the Chippewa: Narrative Histories (Minnesota UP)
 * The Everlasting Sky; New Voices from the People Named the Chippewa (MacMillan)
 * Manifest Manners: Postindian Warriors of Survivance (Wesleyan UP) (later renamed Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance)
 * Crossbloods; Bone Courts, Bingo, and Other Reports (Minnesota UP)
 * Wordarrows: Indians and Whites in the New Fur Trade (Minnesota UP)
 * Shadow Distance: A Gerald Vizenor Reader (Wesleyan UP)
 * Fugitive Poses: Native American Indian Scenes of Absence and Presence (Nebraska UP, 1998)
 * Native Liberty: Natural Reason and Cultural Survivance (Nebraska UP, 2009)

Poetry

 * Poems Born in the Wind (1960)
 * The Old Park Sleepers (1961)
 * Two Wings the Butterfly (privately printed, 1962)
 * South of the Painted Stones (1963)
 * Summer in the Spring: Anishinaabe Lyric Poems and Stories (Oklahoma UP)
 * Slight Abrasions: A Dialogue in Haiku, with Jerome Downes (Nodin Press, 1966)
 * Water Striders (Moving Parts Press)
 * Seventeen Chirps (Nodin Press)
 * Raising the Moon Vines (Nodin Press)
 * Matsushima : Pine Island (Nodin Press, 1984)
 * Cranes Arise: Haiku Scenes (Nodin Press, 1999)
 * Empty Swings (Haiku in English Series) (Nodin Press)
 * Bear Island: The War at Sugar Point (Minnesota UP, 2006)
 * Almost Ashore (Salt Publishing, 2006)

Plays and screenplays

 * Harold of Orange (1984)
 * Ishi and the wood ducks – a four-act play on the story of Ishi, a Yahi man whose ethnographic information and retellings of his people's folk takes were audio-recorded in 1915. The play has been published in:

Edited anthology

 * Native American Literature: A Brief Introduction and Anthology (1997)

Edited collections of essays

 * Narrative Chance: Postmodern Discourse on Native American Indian Literatures (Oklahoma UP)
 * Survivance: Narratives of Native Presence (Nebraska UP, 2008)

Monographs and essay collections on Vizenor's work

 * Pellerin, Simone, ed. (2007). Gerald Vizenor: Profils Americains 20. Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée (In English)
 * Velie, Alan R. (1982). Four American Indian literary masters: N. Scott Momaday, James Welch, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Gerald Vizenor (1st ed.). Norman, Oklahoma (U.S.): University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0806116495.
 * Pellerin, Simone, ed. (2007). Gerald Vizenor: Profils Americains 20. Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée (In English)
 * Velie, Alan R. (1982). Four American Indian literary masters: N. Scott Momaday, James Welch, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Gerald Vizenor (1st ed.). Norman, Oklahoma (U.S.): University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0806116495.
 * Velie, Alan R. (1982). Four American Indian literary masters: N. Scott Momaday, James Welch, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Gerald Vizenor (1st ed.). Norman, Oklahoma (U.S.): University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0806116495.
 * Velie, Alan R. (1982). Four American Indian literary masters: N. Scott Momaday, James Welch, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Gerald Vizenor (1st ed.). Norman, Oklahoma (U.S.): University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0806116495.
 * Velie, Alan R. (1982). Four American Indian literary masters: N. Scott Momaday, James Welch, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Gerald Vizenor (1st ed.). Norman, Oklahoma (U.S.): University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0806116495.

Essays on Vizenor's work

 * Contemporary Authors: Biography – Vizenor, Gerald Robert (1934–), Thomson Gale.
 * Other Words: American Indian Literature, Law, and Culture, (American Indian Literature and Critical Studies Series), Jace Weaver, Univ. Oklahoma Press.
 * "Subverting the Dominant Paradigm: Gerald Vizenor's Trickster Discourse", Kerstin Schmidt, Studies in American Indian Literatures, 7, 65, 1995 Spring.
 * That the People Might Live: Native American Literatures and Native American Community, Jace Weaver, Oxford University Press.
 * "Text as trickster: postmodern language games in Gerald Vizenor's Bearheart." (Maskers and Tricksters), An article from: MELUS, by Elizabeth Blair
 * "Gerald Vizenor and his Heirs of Columbus: a postmodern quest for more discourse". An article from: The American Indian Quarterly by Barry E Laga
 * "Monkey kings and mojo: postmodern ethnic humor in Kingston, Reed, and Vizenor", An article from: MELUS, by John Lowe
 * "Vizenorian Jurisprudence: Legal Interventions, Narrative Shadows and Other Interpretive Possibilities", (Critical Essay) by Juana María Rodríguez in Loosening the Seams: Interpretations of Gerald Vizenor, edited by A. Robert Lee, 2000.
 * "Real Stories: Memory, Violence, and Enjoyment in Vizenor's Bearheart" by Jon Hauss in Literature & Psychology, Fall 1995.
 * "Postmodern bears in the texts of Gerald Vizenor". (Critical Essay), An article from: MELUS, by Nora Baker Barry
 * "'Bad Breath': Gerald Vizenor's Lacanian fable". (Critical Essay), An article from: Studies in Short Fiction by Linda Lizut Helstern
 * Native American Writers of the United States, (Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 175), Kenneth M. Roemer (ed.), Gale Research.
 * Woodland word warrior: An introduction to the works of Gerald Vizenor, A. Lavonne Brown Ruoff.

 * Partial Recall: With Essays on Photographs of Native North Americans, Lucy Lippard (ed.)
 * Native American Autobiography: An Anthology (Wisconsin Studies in American Autobiography), Arnold Krupat (ed.), University of Wisconsin Press.
 * Growing Up in Minnesota: Ten Writers Remember Their Childhoods, Chester G. Anderson, University of Minnesota Press.
 * Inheriting the Land: Contemporary Voices from the Midwest, Mark Vinz; Thom Tammaro (eds.), University of Minnesota Press.
 * "Gerald Vizenor, a special edition", Louis Owens (ed.), Studies in American Indian Literatures, Volume 9, Number 1, Spring 1997, including:
 * "'Interior Dancers': Transformations of Vizenor's Poetic Visions", Kimberly M. Blaeser
 * "The Ceded Landscape of Gerald Vizenor's Fiction", Chris LaLonde
 * "Blue Smoke and Mirrors: Griever's Buddhist Heart", Linda Lizut Helstern
 * "Liberation and Identity: Bearing the Heart of The Heirship Chronicles", Andrew McClure
 * "Liminal Landscapes: Motion, Perspective and Place in Gerald Vizenor's Fiction", Bradley John Monsma
 * "Doubling in Gerald Vizenor's Bearheart: The Pilgrimage Strategy or Bunyan Revisited", Bernadette Rigel-Cellard
 * "Legal and Tribal Identity in Gerald Vizenor's The Heirs of Columbus", Stephen D. Osborne
 * Other Destinies: Understanding the American Indian Novel, (American Indian Literature and Critical Studies, Vol 3), Louis Owens, University of Oklahoma Press.
 * Mediation in Contemporary Native American Fiction (American Indian Literature and Critical Studies, Vol 15), James Ruppert, University of Oklahoma Press.
 * Native American Perspectives on Literature and History, (American Indian Literature and Critical Studies Series, Vol 19) by Alan R. Velie (ed.), University of Oklahoma Press.
 * (Articles by Juana Maria Rodriguez, Alan R. Velie, Robert Alan Warrior and Kimberley Blaeser address Vizenor's writings.)
 * The Turn to the Native, by Arnold Krupat, University of Nebraska Press.
 * Cultural Difference and the Literary Text: Pluralism and the Limits of Authenticity in North American Literatures, Edited by Winfried Siemerling and Katrin Schwenk
 * Sacred Trusts: Essays on Stewardship and Responsibility, Michael Katakis, Russell Chatham (Illustrator), Mercury House.
 * Native American Testimony: A Chronicle of Indian-White Relations from Prophecy to Present, 1492–1992, Peter Nabokov, Penguin USA
 * Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures, Russell Ferguson, Martha Gever, Mit Press.
 * "Listening to Native Americans: Making Peace with the Past for the Future", John Barry Ryan, in Listening: Journal of Religion and Culture, Vol. 31, No.1 Winter 1996 pp. 24–36.
 * "Transformation in Progress" by Annalee Newitz and Jillian Sandell, in Bad Subjects, an online journal.
 * Spring Wind Rising: The American Indian Novel and the Problem of History, Stripes, James D. [dissertation].
 * "Transformation in Progress" by Annalee Newitz and Jillian Sandell, in Bad Subjects, an online journal.
 * Spring Wind Rising: The American Indian Novel and the Problem of History, Stripes, James D. [dissertation].

Journals

 * Transmotion: Journal of Vizenor Studies and Indigenous Studies, ed. David J. Carlson, James Mackay, David Stirrup and Laura Adams Weaver. See: for journal issue listing.

Anthologies

 * I Tell You Now: Autobiographical Essays by Native American Writers, Brian Swann, Arnold Krupat, Brompton Books Corp.
 * Visit Teepee Town: Native Writings After the Detours, Diane Glancy; Mark Nowak (eds.), Coffeehouse Press.
 * Stories Migrating Home: Anishnaabe Prose, Kimberly Blaeser (ed.), Loonfeather Press: Wisconsin
 * Talking Leaves: Contemporary Native American Short Stories, Craig Lesley; Katheryn Stavrakis (eds.) Dell Books
 * Earth Song, Sky Spirit: Short Stories of the Contemporary Native American Experience, Clifford E. Trafzer (ed.)
 * Earth Power Coming: Short Fiction in Native American Literature, Simon J. Ortiz (ed.), Navajo Community College Press
 * Songs from This Earth on Turtle's Back: An Anthology of Poetry by American Indian Writers, Joseph Bruchac (ed.), Greenfield Review Press
 * Smoke Rising: The Native North American Literary Companion, Janet Witalec, Visible Ink Press.
 * Words in the Blood: Contemporary Indian Writers of North and South America, Jamake Highwater (ed.), New American Library.
 * Blue Dawn, Red Earth: New Native American Storytellers, Clifford E. Trafzer (ed.), Anchor Books
 * The Lightning Within: An Anthology of Contemporary American Indian Fiction, Edited and with an introduction by Alan R. Velie, University of Nebraska Press.
 * American Indian Literature: An Anthology, Alan R. Velie, University of Oklahoma Press.
 * Harper's Anthology of 20th century Native American Poetry, Duane Niatum (ed.) HarperCollins
 * Twenty Six Minnesota Writers, Monico D. Degrazia (ed.), Nodin Press.
 * After Yesterday's Crash: The Avant-Pop Anthology, Larry McCaffery (ed.), Penguin USA
 * The New Native American Novel: Works in Progress, Mary Bartlett (ed.), University of New Mexico Press.
 * The Writer's Notebook, Howard Junker, HarperCollins.
 * Listening to Ourselves: More Stories from 'the Sound of Writing', Alan Cheuse; Caroline Marshall (eds.), Anchor Books.
 * Avant-Pop: Fiction for a Daydream Nation, Larry McCaffery (ed.), Fc2/Black Ice Books
 * Before Columbus Foundation Fiction Anthology: Selections from the American Book Awards 1980–1990. Ishmael Reed; Kathryn Trueblood; Shawn Wong (eds.), W W Norton & Co.
 * Without Discovery: A Native Response to Columbus (Turning Point Series), Ray Gonzalez (ed.), Broken Moon Press.
 * A Gathering of Flowers: Stories About Being Young in America, Joyce Carol Thomas (ed.), Harpercollins Juvenile Books.
 * American Short Fiction, Spring 1991. Laura Furman, University of Texas Press.
 * An Illuminated History of the Future. Curtis White (ed.), Fc2/Black Ice Books.
 * Fiction International, San Diego State University Press.
 * An Other Tongue: Nation and Ethnicity in the Linguistic Borderlands, Alfred Arteaga (ed.), Duke University Press.
 * Contemporary Archaeology in Theory, (Social Archaeology), Robert Preucel; Ian Hodder (eds.), Blackwell Pub.
 * Encyclopedia of North American Indians, by Frederick E. Hoxie (ed.), Houghton Mifflin Co.
 * A Companion to American Thought (Blackwell Reference), Richard Wightman Fox; James T. Kloppenberg (eds.), Blackwell Pub.
 * Culture and the Imagination, Proceedings of the Third Stuttgart Seminar on Cultural Studies, Verlag Für Wissenschaft und Forschung: Stuttgart, Germany, 1995
 * From Different Shores: Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America, Ronald Takaki (ed.), Oxford University Press.

Interviews

 * "Constitutional Narratives: A Conversation with Gerald Vizenor," Gerald Vizenor and James Mackay. In Centering Anishinaabeg Studies: Understanding the World through Stories, ed. Jill Doerfler, Niiganwewidam James Sinclair and Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark, (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013)
 * Postindian Conversations, Gerald Robert Vizenor, A. Robert Lee, University of Nebraska Press.
 * Excavating Voices: Listening to Photographs of Native Americans, Michael Katakis (ed.), University of Pennsylvania Museum Press.
 * Mythic Rage and Laughter: An Interview with Gerald Vizenor, Dallas Miller, 1995, Studies in American Indian Literatures, 7, 77, 1995
 * Survival This Way: Interviews With American Indian Poets, Joseph Bruchac III (ed.), (Sun Tracks Books, No 15) University of Arizona Press.
 * Winged Words: American Indian Writers Speak, Laura Coltelli, University of Nebraska Press.
 * Contemporary Authors. Autobiography Series (Vol 22. ), Gale Research
 * American Contradictions: Interviews With Nine American Writers, Wolfgang Binder; Helmbrecht Breinig (eds.). Wesleyan University Press.
 * First published in German as Facing America, Multikulturelle Literatur def heutigen USA in Texten und Interviews, Rotpunktverlag, Leipzig, Germany, 1994.

Textbooks

 * The McGraw-Hill Introduction to Literature, Gilbert H. Muller, McGraw Hill Text.
 * Ways in: Approaches to Reading and Writing About Literature, Gilbert H. Muller, John A. Williams, McGraw Hill Text.
 * The Harper American Literature, Volume 1; 2nd Edition, Donald McQuade, Robert Atwan, Martha Banta, Justin Kaplan, Harpercollins College Div.

title: Gerald Vizenor


text:
Ray Young Bear

Ray Young Bear (born 1950 in Marshalltown, Iowa) is a Meskwaki poet and novelist. He was raised on the Meskwaki Tribal Settlement in Tama County, Iowa. He writes about contemporary Native Americans in English and in Meskwaki. The theme of his poems and other works are Native Americans' search for identity. His poems express the painful awareness of identity loss.

Young Bear's great-great grandfather, Maminwanike, purchased the land that the Meskwaki Settlement was built on. The settlement is located along the Iowa River. Young Bear's great-great grandfather was only a boy when he made the decision to move the tribe from Kansas back to Iowa where the tribe is originally from. After his great-great grandfather's decision, Meskwaki people were sent in 1857 to negotiate the purchase of land that eventually became the Meskwaki Settlement. It is in this way that the Meskwaki Tribe that Young Bear is a part of is unique. The Meskwaki Tribe is one of very few tribes that bought their land instead of having their land allotted to them by the government.

Early life and education
Ray Young Bear was born in Marshalltown, Iowa, and raised on the Meskwaki Tribal Settlement in Iowa. It is unique as a place where in 1857 the Meskwaki bought land privately for the tribe, like other citizens, authorized by state legislation.

Ray Young Bear was raised by his maternal grandmother, No-ko-me-sa, for the first ten years of his life. Young Bear spoke Meskwaki as his first language, taught by his maternal grandmother; she also encouraged him to learn English. He was not comfortable in this language until late in high school. She was also a key teacher of his culture, its customs, and its myths and belief systems, which he embraces. He has been influenced as a writer through his grandmother who he claims is his greatest influence. Other influences that Ray Young Bear attributes his writing to are the journals of his grandfathers that date back to the early 1800s. Young Bear believes that writing is in his blood.

As a youth, Young Bear attended an Upward Bound program at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. Young Bear also attended the University of Iowa and Grinnell College. Later he met poet Robert Bly, who was very influential. Through Robert Bly, Young Bear was able to meet with many editors that ultimately led to his work getting published. Young Bear also studied at Pomona College between 1969 and 1971, where he took advantage of the chance to hear readings by visiting poets. Ray Young Bear has taught creative writing as well as Native American Literature at The Institute of American Indian Art, Eastern Washington University, Meskwaki Indian Elementary School, the University of Iowa, and Iowa State University.

Literary career
Young Bear first wrote poetry in Meskwaki and began to translate his work into English, publishing his first poem in 1968. His first audience that he considers while writing is his own tribal members. He always keeps his grandmother in mind while writing. He said, "My grandmother was always giving me advice on how I should watch what I say, because she would say that the single word itself is very, very powerful."

He writes about the dislocation of contemporary Native Americans who are pulled by two different cultures. He has written some prose fiction, but says that "all his writing is merely experiments with words" (Kratzert 1998). His novels, starting with Black Eagle Child (1992), describe his youth through the character of Edgar Bearchild. They combine first-person narrative, letters, religious imagery, and poetry. He often switches between English and the Meskwaki language to express himself more fully.

Woodland Drum Group
Ray Young Bear helped form the Woodland Drum Group. Members of the group include: Todd and Russell Young Bear who are Ray's brothers, Ray's nephew Elgin Young Bear, wife Stella Young Bear, Brother-in-law Gordon Lasley, and Clark and Eloise Lasley. Young Bear and his family formed the Woodland Drum Group in 1983 to entertain other Native Americans by participating in tribal celebrations. The group first performed in 1984. The group has performed over 250 times throughout the United States, Canada, and Netherlands. The group performs songs and dances to Native Americans and non-Native American audiences. The goal of the Woodland Drum Group is to educate non-Native Americans about the meaning behind the dances and songs of Native Americans.

Awards

 * Creative Writing Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (1976)
 * Honorary Doctorate in letters from Luther College, Decorah, Iowa (1993)
 * Ruth Suckow Award for Remnants of the First Earth (1997)

Works
Young Bear's work has appeared in numerous magazines, including American Poetry Review, Gettysburg Review, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Parnassus, Ploughshares, and Virginia Quarterly Review.

Collections

 * Grandmother (1975)
 * Winter of the Salamander (1980)
 * The Invisible Musician (1990)
 * The Rock Island Hiking Club (2001)
 * The Aura of the Blue Flower That is a Goddess (2001)

Fiction

 * Black Eagle Child (1992)
 * Remnants of the First Earth (1996)

List of Anthologies Containing Ray's Work

 * Uncommon Wealth: An Anthology of Poetry in English
 * The Best American Poetry 1996
 * Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness
 * New Worlds of Literature: Writings from America's Many Cultures
 * Columbus & Beyond: Views from Native Americans
 * The Remembered Earth: An Anthology of Contemporary Native American Literature
 * Harper's Anthology of 20th Century Native American Poetry
 * Songs from This Earth on Turtle's Back: An Anthology of Poetry by American Indian Writers
 * Words in the Blood: Contemporary Indian Writers of North and South America
 * Voices of the Rainbow: Contemporary Poetry by Native Americans
 * Nothing but the Truth: An Anthology of Native American Literature

title: Ray Young Bear