Sister Nations: Native American Women Writers on Community

Contributors

Contributors kateri akiwenzie-damm, a Band member of the Chippewa of Nawash born in Toronto in 1965, received an ma in English literature from the University of Ottawa in 1996. She has lived and worked in Neyaashiinigmiing (formerly the Cape Croker Reserve) on the Saugeen Peninsula in southwestern Ontario since 1994. Her writing has been published in various anthologies , journals, and magazines in Canada, the U.S., Aotearoa, Australia, and Germany. Of her home in Neyaashiinigmiing, she writes: I know I belong here and regardless of where else I might live, this will always be my home. This is where I live and write and remember who I am. poetry: my heart is a stray bullet (Kegedonce Press, 1993). Esther Belin (Navajo) was raised in Lynwood, California. She is among the myriad of indigenous peoples on this planet who survive in urbanized areas. She graduated from the University of California–Berkeley and Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her work work has appeared in Neon Pow-Wow (Northland, 1993); Song of the Turtle (Ballantine, 1994); and Speaking for the Generations (University of Arizona Press, 1998). poetry: From the Belly of My Beauty (University of Arizona, 1999). Kimberly Blaeser (Anishinaabe) is an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe and grew up on the White Earth Reservation. An associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, she teaches courses in Native American literature, creative writing, and American nature writing. Her collection, Trailing You, won the 1993 First Book 197 Award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas. Her poetry, short fiction, personal essays, and scholarly articles have been anthologized in over sixty Canadian and American journals and collections. Of “Shadow Sisters” she writes: This piece honors the many enduring relationships between woman on Indian reservations throughout this continent. It offers one chronology among the many sister stories—stories of our mothers and our aunties, our cousins and our own sisters. Native women still work at minimum -wage jobs to feed their families. They share work and child rearing, they support one another, and they carry the family and tribal stories. They live common, unselfconscious lives, with little time for the luxury of revolution. National news stories like the aim (American Indian Movement) occupation at Wounded Knee or the Native Quincentenary observance of survival 500 years after Columbus are far removed from the day-to-day reality of these women. And yet, to the strength, humor, and anger they embody, we own our every survival. poetry: Trailing You (Greenfield Review Press, 1995); Absentee Indians (2002). critical studies: Gerald Vizenor: Writing in the Oral Tradition (Oklahoma, 1996). anthology: Stories Migrating Home (Loonfeather Press, 1999). Vee F. Browne is from Cottonwood/Tselani, Arizona, and is a member of the Navajo Nation. She belongs to the Bitter Water and Water Flows Together clans. She is a journalist, educator, volleyball and basketball referee, and fiction writer. An award-winning author, she has received much acclaim for her children’s books. Browne’s short stories have appeared in Neon Pow-Wow (Northland, 1993) and Blue Dawn, Red Earth (Anchor Books, 1996). 198 children’s books: Maria Tallchief (Simon & Schuster, 1995); Owl Book (Scholastic, 1995); Monster Bird (Northland, 1993); Monster Slayer (Northland, 1991). Elizabeth Cook-Lynn was born at Fort Thompson, South Dakota, and is a member of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe. She is a recipient of an Oyate Igluwitaya award given by native university students in South Dakota, an award which refers to those who “aid in the ability of the people to see clearly in the company of each other.” Since her retirement from Eastern Washington University, Cook-Lynn has been a visiting professor and consultant in Native American studies at the University of California–Davis and Arizona State University. Her many awards include the Myers Center Award for the Study of Human Rights in North America in 1997. She has been writer-in-residence at several universities and lives in the Black Hills of South Dakota. fiction: Aurelia: A Crow Creek Trilogy (Colorado, 1999). poetry: I Remember the Fallen Trees: New and Selected Poems (Eastern Washington, 1998). nonfiction: Anti-Indianism in Modern America: A Voice from Tatekeya’s Earth (Illinois, 2001); The Politics of Hallowed Ground: Wounded Knee and the Struggle for Indian Sovereignty (Illinois, 1998; co-author with Mario Gonzalez); Why I Can’t Read Wallace Stegner: A Tribal Voice (Wisconsin, 1996). Pauline Danforth...