In modern times there have been two Native Americans one could call troubadors on a mission: Jack Gladstone and Joseph Bruchac. Both have been effective and, to use an old-fashioned term, are “beloved.” Thanks to YouTube, we can all have access to them.
Jack Gladstone
Gladstone (www.jackgladstone.com) lives in both Browning and on the Flathead and is often found there telling stories or singing or just hanging out. He has been with the series in Glacier National Park called “Native America Speaks” since its beginning in 1985. Formally, he says, “I am a Storysmith, forging ancient, historical, and contemporary narratives into accessible lyrical art. My work promotes the collaborative revitalization of ‘kinship centered’ traditions.” If you can’t get to Glacier Park, not to worry: you can buy CD’s on his website. Technically, he could be called “Metis” (mixed) but he’s enrolled with the Blackfeet of Montana. His family is part of the diaspora created by WWII labor on the Pacific coast, family that is now returning.
Here’s a coup worth counting: “National Aeronautics and Space Administration, (2002) chose Jack’s original work Buffalo Cafe to board space shuttle ENDEAVOR on November 23rd. The disc accompanied CMDR John B. Herrington, USN, NASA’s First American Indian astronaut, (Chickasaw). Buffalo Cafe - and this mission - landed safely.”
Joseph Bruchac
Gladstone is a Plains Indian, familiar from movies and stories. Bruchac is a kind of Indian much less known: the Eastern Woodland peoples. He is also mixed and celebrates his other ethnicity, which is Czech, using story, song and costumes the same as he does with his tribal heritage. He’s an includer and a supporter, shepherding many younger writers and students.
This is the publisher’s blurb for “Returning the Gift,” a book and continuing event.
“Returning the Gift: Poetry and Prose from the First North American Native Writers' Festival” edited by Joseph Bruchac, was a game-changer -- shifting from the PC vengeance against whites to the promotion of specifically Native American writers. A person who is serious about the reality of Native American writing, as opposed to the glamorous sub-categories that publishers demand, could do worse than to start with this book.
"Returning the Gift", edited by Joe Bruchac
“An unprecedented gathering of more than 300 Native writers was held in Norman, Oklahoma, in 1992. The Returning the Gift Festival brought more Native writers together in one place than at any other time in history. "Returning the Gift," observes co-organizer Joseph Bruchac, "both demonstrated and validated our literature and our devotion to it, not just to the public, but to ourselves." In compiling this volume, Bruchac invited every writer who attended the festival to submit new, unpublished work; he then selected the best of the more than 200 submissions to create a collection that includes established writers like Duane Niatum, Simon Ortiz, Lance Henson, Elizabeth Woody, Linda Hogan, and Jeanette Armstrong, and also introduces such lesser-known or new voices as Tracy Bonneau, Jeanetta Calhoun, Kim Blaeser, and Chris Fleet. The anthology includes works from every corner of the continent, representing a wide range of tribal affiliations, languages, and cultures. By taking their peoples' literature back to them in the form of stories and songs, these writers see themselves as returning the gift of storytelling, culture, and continuance to the source from which it came. In addition to contributions by 92 writers are two introductory chapters: Joseph Bruchac comments on the current state of Native literature and the significance of the festival, and Geary Hobson traces the evolution of the event itself.”
If this approach appeals to you, go to the website for the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. http://www.wordcraftcircle.org/event-1913343 I have neither motivation nor ability to separate out the people who qualify to present. I assume anyone is welcome to attend.
Both Bruchac and Gladstone emphasize the rootedness of their lives in nature, connection to their place of identification but also “brown” people everywhere and the unifying image of the planet. All of this is supported and encouraged by academic sponsorship. Both men have college degrees, but they are not employed as professors. Both travel the country, enjoy extensive networks, and each had strong male role models.
Joe on the left, his grandfather on the right.
Bruchac’s autobiography “Bowman’s Store: A Journey To Myself” explains how and why his Abenaki grandfather presented himself as “French.” His sister has a parallel career.
Marge Bruchac
https://www.sas.upenn.edu/anthropology/people/bruchac She is as intelligent, measured, and centered as Joe.
Living out the advice to “grow where you are planted,” Joe and his family are still living in Porter Corners. "His work as an educator includes eight years of directing a college program for Skidmore College inside a maximum security prison. With his late wife, Carol, he founded the Greenfield Review Literary Center and The Greenfield Review Press." This is the only publishing house I know of that was NA owned. It is closed. (The white parallel might be artist Russell Chatham’s Livingston, MT, “Clark City Press.” Also closed.)
Pop and heavily promoted entrepreneurs of Native American writing -- even the AIM celebrities who have become movie stars -- have little relationship to many serious artists and musicians who cherish their reservation relatives and visit the young ones in schools. It’s yet another imposition that media pandering prevents the expression of authenticity by the Original Peoples. It is this pandering that leads publishers and Hollywood, who tend to have limited experience with reservations, to force their assumptions onto authors. It’s particularly troublesome that they cling to the 19th century conflicts that cleared the prairie for homesteading and industry. Even today we’re hearing about the oil industry trying to get into the pristine mountains of the Blackfeet and the coal industry actually persuading the US government to evict the Navajo from tribal lands.
Navajo country.
Nature in the background; coal mining in the foreground.
Gladstone and Bruchac are from my generation, early Boomers like Eloise Cobell, Darrell Kipp, Curly Bear Wagner, Jim Welch, Jr., to name effective Blackfeet leaders. All four have “gone on ahead”. Luckily there are younger people still living and working. Bruchac was born in 1942, according to Wikipedia. Gladstone is not in Wikipedia. The point is not Wikipedia, which is notoriously unreliable when it comes to indigenous people, but that there is a time-horizon that the arrows take us toward. They always move faster than we expected and that means we must make opportunities before it’s too late.
I would loved to have been in your class with Curly Bear and Darrell. Bruchac is from my hometown Schenectady. I remember him in the early days.
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