Buffalo and her Calf near St. Ignatius, Montana - 1991
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Buffalo and her Calf near St. Ignatius, Montana - 1991 |
Phinney Hall, Room 116
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Welcome to my home page. I have provided some information helpful for my students and anyone who may share in common interests. Feel free to contact me. As I am periodically updating information and adding new links to this page, please re-visit at any time.
To access my course syllabi:
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Courses Taught (syllabi and tentative next taught):
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Some links of importance:
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First DeSmet Graduates - Bachelor's Degree in Business Management - 1997 - Vicki Abraham, Megan Harding, Brenda Abraham, John Abraham, and myself |
Let me offer a little about who I am and my professional interests. I came to the University of Idaho in the Fall of 1998, having received a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Colorado in 1979. I taught at Carroll College in Helena, Montana from 1980 to 1986, and Lewis-Clark State College in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho from 1987 to 1998, where I also served as Director for the college's north Idaho programs. While with LCSC and working closely with the Coeur d'Alene Tribe that I was involved in helping establish and coordinate the DeSmet Higher Education Program, a successful college outreach center on the reservation.
While there are many who have contributed to my education and whom I am so indebted, I offer sincere appreciation to my primary teachers -- Tom Yellowtail, Crow elder, who infused spirit into humanity and the world; Joseph Epes Brown , Scholar of American Indian Religions, who infused humanity and spirit into scholarship; Deward Walker, Scholar of American Indian Peoples, who brought scholarship into the service of others; Lawrence Aripa, Coeur'Alene elder, who brought Coyote's spirit and laughter into it all; and my "elder brothers and sisters," Alvin Howe, Cliff SiJohn, Rob and Rose Moran, and Rayburn and Janet Beck who have been my indispensable guides throughout the entire journey. I also wish to thank several of my Coeur d'Alene teachers, Felix Aripa, Mariane Hurley, and Alfred Nomee, as well as my Nez Perce teachers, Josiah and D'Lisa Pinkham, Vera Sonneck, Ann McCormack, and Nakia Williamson. Aho!
I have been conducting various collaborative and applied projects with the Crow (Montana), the Coeur d'Alene (Idaho), the Nez Perce (Idaho), and the Warm Springs Tribes (Oregon). Among our concerns has been the role and the significance of the oral traditions, particularly as those traditions influence a people's relationships with their "landscape" and mediate the impact of Euro-American changes. As collaborative projects, I am also concerned about such ethical issues as developing cultural property rights and appropriate tribal review processes as part of the research. For discussion on some of these issues and examples of my research, see:
The World of the Crow Indians: As Driftwood Lodges. (University of Oklahoma Press 1987 and paper 1993).
Eye Juggling: Seeing the World Through a Looking Glass and a Glass Pane (A workbook for clarifying and interpreting values). (University Press of America 1994).
Stories That Make the World: Oral Literature of the Indian Peoples of the Inland Northwest as Told by Lawrence Aripa, Tom Yellowtail and other Elders. (University of Oklahoma Press 1995 and paper 1999).
Landscape Traveled by Coyote and Crane: The World of the Schitsu'umsh - Coeur d'Alene Indians, in collaboration with the Schitsu'umsh (University of Washington Press 2001; 2005).
"Oral Traditions,” in Companion Guide to the Anthropology of American Indians, Editor, Thomas Biolsi, (Blackwell Publishers 2004).
"If all these great stories were told, great stories will come!," co-authored with Tom Yellowtail (Crow) and Cliff SiJohn (Coeur d’Alene), as presented at the Indigenous Ways of Knowing International Conference, Lewis and Clark College (2007). This paper chronicles my recent journey with cancer, and the healing that came from my family and friends in the Indian community. It also appears in Religion and Healing in Native America, edited by Suzanne Crawford (Praeger Press 2008).
Along with a little "hookless" fly fishing, another little storytelling expression, all aboard - my HO-scale turn-of-the-century logging railroad diorama!
Upon re-telling the last of a series of his most cherished stories from the Buffalo Days (which appear in Stories That Make the World), Tom Yellowtail turned to me and shared the following words that have resonated with me ever since.
"If all these great stories were told, great stories will come!"
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