Contributors

C o n t r ib u t o r s E s s a y i s t s Janice Gould is a mixed-blood of American Indian (Koyangk’auwi Maidu) and European descent who grew up in Berkeley, California. She has won awards for her writing from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Astraea Foundation. Among her publications are Beneath M)' Heart (1990), Alphabet (1996), and Earthquake Weather (1996). Though she lives in Portland, she is completing her doctoral degree at the University of New Mexico. She is cur­ rently coediting a volume of essays on Native American poetry, to be published by the University of Arizona in fall 2001. Maureen Konkle teaches Native and American literature. She is working on a book manuscript titled “The Epistemology of the Treaty: Colonialism and the Emergence of Native Writing, 1768-1868.” Louis Owens (Choctaw/Cherokee/Irish) currently holds the position ofProfessor of English at the University of California, Davis. Among his numerous publica­ tions are Mixedbbod Messages: Literature, Film, Family, Place; Other Destinies: UnderstandingtheAmericanIndianNovel; andJohnSteinbeck’s Re-VisionofAmerica. Carter Revard, Osage on his father’s side and with a full-blood Osage step­ father, was given his Osage name by his grandmother, Josephine Jump, and the tribal elders in 1952. Bom in Pawhuska, Oklahoma—the Agency town—he grew up in the Buck Creek rural district on the Osage Reservation, then took degrees from the University ofTulsa, Oxford, and Yale University. He has taught English at Amherst College and Washington University in St. Louis, and is now Professor Emeritus. He has published three books of poetry—Ponca War Dancers (1980), Cowboys and Indians, Christmas Shopping (1992), and An Eagle Nation (1993)—and a collection ofessays, Family Matters, TribalAffairs (1998). Winning the Dust Bowl, a book of poems and essays including the four pieces printed in the present issue of WAL, is forthcoming from the University of Arizona Press. Andrew Smith is completing his Ph.D. from the University ofNew Mexico. He is currently Visiting Instructor of English and American Studies at Lafayette College. A R T IS T S Acee Blue Eagle (Creek/Pawnee, 1907-1959) is among the most influential American Indian painters. Although many commentators point out that Blue Eagle, a “flamboyant showman,” was adept at marketing “Indianness,” he sup­ ported and mentored numerous younger artists as the first head of the Bacone College Art Department. 2 2 8 WAL 3 5 .1 SUMMER 2 0 0 0 Blue Eagle’s adaptations of the style of earlier Kiowa artists—a flat surface, bright colors, sense ofmotion—became known as the “Bacone,” or “Oklahoma,” style, and Bacone became famous for producing notable artists. Blue Eagle exhib­ ited widely and lectured throughout the United States and Europe about American Indian Art. He has been credited by Ruthe Blalock Jones as “opening many doors” for American Indian artists. Francis Blackbear Bosin (Kiowa/Comanche, 1921-1980). Like the earlier artists known as the Kiowa Five, major influences on his work, Bosin attended Saint Patrick’s Mission School. With a number ofother prominent Indian artists, Bosin later attended a fresco painting school at Fort Sill sponsored by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He called the Kiowa Five “the only painters he recognized in [his] heritage”; like them, he used his art to portray his connections to his tradi­ tional culture. The past “was very real and near to the old people. ... I was the first generation after the end of us. Painting was a way of looking into the past. It kept our dignity alive” (qtd. in Visions and Voices 39). Prairie Fire won the first purchase award at the Philbrook Indian Annual competition in 1953. Buffalo Meat (Cheyenne, 1847-1917) was one of twenty-seven identified ledger book artists imprisoned from 1875 to 1878 at Fort Marion, Florida. After his release, he lived on the Southern Cheyenne Reservation, serving many lead­ ership roles, including head chiefof the tribe, delegate to Washington, D.C., and deacon at the Baptist Church. T. C. Cannon (1946-1978) was bom Pai-doung-u-day (One Who Stands in the Sun) in Lawton, Oklahoma, to a Caddo mother and a Kiowa father. Like others who...