Authors, H-O

Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo, 1951- .
Fishing. [Browerville, Minn.]: Ox Head Press, 1992.
Call Number: (SPL) PS 3558 .A62423 F5x 1992

Joy Harjo’s poetry attempts to bring the world into balance, using the power of the word to form metaphysical as well as social connections. Born in Tulsa to Cherokee/Creek parents, her visionary work treats themes of urban Indian life and connectedness to the earth.

This prose poem was first published in the New York Times. This edition is limited to 400 copies, and forms part of the Ox Head Press series, Minnesota Miniatures.

Special Collections, Golda Meir Library.

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Jamake Highwater

Jamake Highwater.
Kill Hole. New York: Grove Press, 1992.
Call Number: PS 3558 .I373 K5 1992

Highwater is one of the most controversial figures among contemporary American Indian writers. A number of critics have claimed that he is not of Native American descent, and that his claims to Indian ancestry represent yet another case of exploiting Native American heritage and ethnicity. On the other hand, Highwater, who has said he was adopted and does not know for certain his true parentage, has written extensively on American Indian culture and has been a visible and articulate promoter of Native American interests. He has won awards for his writing and other works, several from Native American organizations and tribes. Whatever his heritage or motives, he has become an important contemporary literary voice dealing with matters of Native American culture and heritage.

General Collection, Golda Meir Library

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Linda Hogan

Linda Hogan, 1947- .
Seeing through the Sun. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1985.
Call Number: PS 3558 .O34726 S4 1985

Linda Hogan is a Denver native of Chickasaw descent. This scarce hardcover is a collection of poems which won the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Hogan is an important contemporary Indian poet first published by the Greenfield Review Press founded by Joseph Bruchac.

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Maurice Kenny

Maurice Kenny, 1929- .
The Smell of Slaughter. Marvin, South Dakota: Blue Cloud Quarterly, 1982.
Call Number: (SPL) PS 509 .I5 B59 Volume 28, no. 1

A dynamic poet associated with the Native American Renaissance, Seneca/Mohawk Maurice Kenny grew up in upstate New York. Kenny is an active voice in promoting Native American authors and publications; he has published 15 volumes of poetry and prose, contributed to and edited anthologies, edited the magazine Contact II, published for Strawberry Press and Contact II Press, and maintained an active public reading schedule. His best known work is Blackrobe(1982), a historical narrative of a Jesuit mission to the Mohawks, which was a Pulitzer Prize nominee, and was adapted into a screenplay for a major motion picture of the same title. The Smell of Slaughter includes poems from previous publications, with a cover illustration by the Mohawk artist Rokwaho. Many of these poems also appear in Kenny’s recent anthology Between Two Rivers (1987).

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George Littlechild

George Littlechild, 1958- .
This Land is My Land. Emeryville, Calif.: Children’s Book Press, 1993.
Call Number: (Curriculum) 921 L779t

Born in Edmonton, Alberta, George Littlechild is a member of the Plains Cree Nation, the largest Indian nation in Canada. He is an artist of international renown, and his work is celebrated for its color and aboriginal themes.

Using text and his own paintings, Littlechild describes the historical and personal experiences of North American Indians, as well as elements of his own childhood on and off the Cree Reserve at Hobbema, Alberta.

Curriculum Collection, Golda Meir Library

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Wilma Pearl Mankiller

Wilma Pearl Mankiller, 1945- .
Mankiller: A Chief and Her People. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993.
First Edition, With the Author’s Signed Presentation Inscription to the Golda Meir Library.
Call Number: (SPL) E 99 .C5 M335 1993

This is the autobiography of the former Chief of the Cherokee Nation, recounting her personal story, the history of her people, and the dawning of the Native American Civil Rights struggle. Her book is part of the quest to reclaim and preserve Native American values, as well as to examine her own role as a woman of two cultures and leader of a sovereign nation.

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Joe Marshall

Joe Marshall.
On Behalf of the Wolf and the First Peoples. Santa Fe: Red Crane Books, 1995.
Call Number: (SPL) E 98 .P5 M35 1995

Joseph Marshall III is a Lakota Sioux, born on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation. This book, his first work of non-fiction, is a series of essays and travel sketches filled with insight on history, ecology and indigenous identity.

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N. Scott Momaday

N. Scott Momaday, 1934- .
Angle of Geese and Other Poems. [Boston]: D.R. Godine [1974].
Call Number: (SPL) PS 3563 .O47 A8 c.2

N. Scott Momaday, a Kiowa, is an internationally-renowned American Indian writer. His first novel, House Made of Dawn, won the Pulitzer Prize, an accomplishment which has not been duplicated by any other Indian writer. With a formal background in literature and English, Momaday experimented with the structure of his first novel, incorporating elements of Native American oral tales and poetry, along with stream-of-consciousness techniques, time juxtapositions, and multiple points of view. Indian identity and the problems of fitting into a white society was the focus of Momaday’s novel, initiating a renaissance in Native American literature. Momaday has also published poetry and nonfiction, and is the author of The Way to Rainy Mountain about the great Kiowa migration of the 17th century; part poetry, part history, and part elegy to a lost way of life.

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Simon J. Ortiz

Simon J. Ortiz, 1941- .
Fightin’: New and Collected Short Stories. Chicago: Thunder’s Mouth Press; New York: Distributed by Persea Books, 1983.
Call Number: (SPL) PS 3565 .R77 F5 1983

Simon J. Ortiz, 1941- .
Howbah Indians. Tuscon: Blue Moon Press, 1978.
Call Number: (SPL) PS 3565 .R77 H68x 1978

Simon Ortiz is generally recognized by critics and scholars of American Indian Literature as one of the most talented and accomplished writers of the Native American Renaissance of the 1960s and 1970s. While productive as an essayist and short story writer, his reputation is usually associated with his poetry.

Pueblo-born in Albuquerque and raised in an Acoma-speaking family, Ortiz employs elements of traditional Pueblo narrative and song. Ortiz shows a commitment to preserving and expanding his literary tradition in stories dealing primarily with the nature and consequences of cross-cultural encounters. His short stories bespeak the same values that characterize his poetry. Simon Ortiz’s work is a model of the traditional American Indian voice holding its own in the contemporary world.

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John Milton Oskison

John Milton Oskison, 1874-1947.
Tecumseh and his Times; the Story of a Great Indian. New York, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1938.
Call Number: E 99 .S35 T17

John Oskison, an author of Cherokee descent, was born in 1874 in the Cherokee Nation. A lifelong friend of Will Rogers, he studied at Stanford University and at Harvard. Oskison is one of the earliest Native American novelists. His first novel appeared in 1925. All prior novels written by American Indians were passed off by their publishers as "true" romances of the West, or as historical fiction. Oskison’s early novels made no reference to his Indian background or upbringing, and referred to Indian issues only in passing. His only book to deal explicitly with Indian issues was his biography of Tecumseh. An author whose works are by now largely forgotten, Oskison remains important for his position in the history of Native American literature.

General Collection, Golda Meir Library

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