 |
 |
|
|
Native American Author Roundtable
1.
AOTW: To those of you who have Native American backgrounds --- when did you become interested in writing about your culture? To those of you who have non-Native American backgrounds, what fueled your interest to write about Native American culture?
Kathleen O'Neal Gear: I am a matrilineal descendant of Cherokee ancestors. Both my mother and my father had a passion for archaeology and Native American history. When I was young, they spent a great deal of time teaching me about Native American cultures, so I suppose I just grew up with a strong sense of that heritage. In addition, we spent every family vacation driving around the United States, visiting historical or archaeological sites. The first professional paper I ever presented was on the Anasazi in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, and the sites that play such important roles in our Anasazi Mystery series, The Visitant, The Summoning God, and Bone Walker. But, oddly enough, I actually decided to dedicate my life to the study of America's native peoples when I was working on an archaeological excavation in Israel. Strange how things work out. I was watching the mortar fire on the Golan Heights and suddenly longed to be home digging an Anasazi site so badly I could barely stand it. I guess you really do have to get away to see your life clearly. That led me to UCLA to work on my Ph.D. in American Indian History, and later to Wyoming where I landed a job with the US Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management, as the state historian and, later, archaeologist in the Casper District. I fought battle after battle to help save sites that documented our extraordinary national heritage --- Native American as well as Euro-American. All of these things led to my career as a fiction author. Fiction is a very powerful educational tool. Instead of reaching a few thousand people, a novel can touch millions.
W. Michael Gear: My story is somewhat similar to Kathleen's. My parents also believed in travel as a means of education. A fourth generation Coloradoan, I climbed through Mesa Verde almost before I could walk. Half of my family were hard rock miners, the other half, frontier ranchers. I grew up on the stories of hardship and heritage. At the age of nine, a National Geographic TV special changed my life. I watched the facial reconstruction of Leakey's Zinjanthropus bosiei. When those eyes stared out from the past, I was destined to be an anthropologist. My fascination with what it means to be human carried me right into the anthropology department at Colorado State University. By the time I completed my M.A., I was dead broke. In Wyoming they were hiring archaeologists at the unbelievable rate of four bucks an hour --- all the money in the world in 1978! For the next six years I worked as a professional archaeologist in the Rocky Mountain region, and wrote during the winter when the field season slowed down. Kathy and I discussed writing full time on our first date, and by 1985, I had sold my business and was working feverishly to make our dreams come true. In the beginning, no one was interested in Native American prehistory. We sold historical and science fiction based on Native American culture instead. It was only when we discussed some of the things we found on the I-70 expansion project, that an editor finally became interested.
Thomas Perry: Fiction almost always begins with a character. A number of years ago, when I was thinking about what I would write next, I knew two things: I wanted to construct one book around a female character, and I wanted to write a book set in the part of the world where I was born, the western end of New York State. As I began to think about the character and the area, I realized that making my character a Seneca would give me a chance to have her see the place in ways that were fresh to me. The result is a woman named Jane Whitefield. She not only knows the region as it is, but as it once was: it's an area where big things happened. She also has a command of a rich set of myths that give various spots moods --- happy, sad, threatening. As I began to do research about traditional Seneca culture and history, I immediately started to find elements of it that were perfect for her: e.g. the high status of women in the society, and the custom common to all the Iroquois nations of adopting strangers and giving them new lives as new people.
David Matheson: I had long wished for a telling and moving story that reflected all that is good about our native people, including not only the ceremonial aspects of our culture, but also the deep teachings. These teachings are the foundation of our way of life. When that story I had always hoped for never materialized I became more and more interested and motivated in writing the story myself. We native people have a rich and beautiful heritage. We come from ancestors of a beautiful and powerful nature. Our ancestors knew a lot about life, love, and the natural environment. They utilized that knowledge to build a culture, a tradition, and a ceremonial life that perfectly complement daily life, family, responsibility, and harmonious communion with nature.
David and Aimee Thurlo: David was raised on the Navajo Nation in Shiprock, and naturally this total immersion background made a permanent impression upon him. Though David had some Sioux blood in him, he was considered an "Anglo" and was very much in the minority on the Rez, an enlightening experience which provides its own perspective. The experience was very positive though and the Ella Clah series and the Lee Nez series provided the opportunity to "write about what you know."
Penina Keen Spinka: It hit me when I was hiking the Santa Monica Mountains and our hiking leader told us about the first people to hike these same paths. He told us a little Chumash history. I borrowed some of his resource books and was hooked on finding out more about the Chumash and other Native Americans who lived in places where I have lived.
David Marion Wilkinson: I grew up in small town in Arkansas where the most interesting people were Cherokee. As long as I could remember I've had Native American friends and neighbors. It turns out that my wife has as much as 1/4 Cherokee blood. Connections to Native Americans are all around me. I have always been fascinated by history, particularly American history, and Native American culture is a huge part of that. My first published novel dealt with a number of indigenous cultures --- Comanche mostly. I worked very hard at accuracy and I feel like I did all right. My latest novel deals almost exclusively with the Cherokee and I worked even harder to research the history and culture of these fascinating people. An Anglo writer isn't necessarily handicapped if he's willing to do his/her homework. In the end, a successful historical novel relies most on a good story. I believe Oblivion's Altar is built around one of the very best --- which is no reflection on me because it's all true.
Margaret Coel: My love of western history first drew me to the Arapahos who had once lived on the plains of Colorado. I wanted to know where their villages, hunting grounds and battlefields were located, what it was like to live in a tipi and hunt the buffalo, what it was like to be a warrior or chief or Arapaho woman in the Old Time. So I started doing research and ended up writing a nonfiction book, Chief Left Hand, both a biography of an Arapaho leader and the story of the tribe in the Old Time. While working on the book, a new curiosity overtook me. I wanted to know about their culture --- what they believed, what sustained them through difficult times, what strengthens them today. It's an ancient, immensely rich culture, and one that reveals itself slowly. After having published The Shadow Dancer, novel number eight in my mystery series, I'm still learning. A note from Nancy Berland, Coel's publicist: Published by the University of Oklahoma Press in 1981, the biography of the Arapaho leader was named the year's Best Nonfiction Book by the National Association of Press Women. Now considered a classic, Chief Left Hand has never been out of print.
Joseph Marshall III: I first became interested in writing about my culture as a young adult when I realized that oral storytellers had a very limited audience.
|
|
|
|
|
(c) Copyright 2002, AuthorsOnTheWeb.com. All rights
reserved.
|
|
