Buffalo and her Calf near St. Ignatius, Montana - 1991

Rodney Frey

Professor Emeritus of Ethnography

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: 

Other courses previously taught and links:

 

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.  

On the side, love a little fly fishing in the nearby rivers and lakes, and model railroading (view a short video from Trackside Model Railroading, November 2018, of my HOn3 diorama).

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, Mari Watters, 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  and Wasco 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 and activities, 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).  1997 2nd Edition e-edition
• 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). Developed in collaboration with elders, Stories That Make the World originally was part of a teacher's guide to a Language Arts Curriculum for the Coeur d'Alene School District.
• 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). This five-year collaborative study, was originally developed for the Coeur d'Alene Tribe's Natural Resource Damage Assessment of the Silver Valley, to offer a comprehensive description of a contemporary people's reliance in the face of environmental damage.
• Nez Perce Tribe Lifelong Learning Online Module (Nez Perce Tribe 2001).
• Coeur d'Alene Tribe Lifelong Learning Online Module (Coeur d'Alene Tribe 2002).
• Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs Lifelong Learning Online Module (Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs 2003).
• "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).
• "Confluence of Rivers: Idaho Indians," co-authored with Robert McCall, in Idaho's Place: Rethinking the Gem State's Past, edited by Adam Sowards. (University of Washington Press, 2014)
• Sqigwts, a collaborative project between the Schitsu'umsh (Coeur d'Alene Tribe) and University of Idaho, 2015.  This "proof in concept" project was funded by the USGS, under the purview of the Northwest Climate Science Center.  Among the five "deliverables," the project demonstrates that there is value in Indigenous knowledge and practice, in consort with scientific knowledge, in addressing issues of climate change.  We developed an innovative means to access and disseminate what the Schitsu'umsh call hnkhwelkhwlnet, "our ways of life in the world," though the creation of an interactive 3-D Landscape (using virtual world technology), embedded with the structure and dynamics of Indigenous storytelling. We hope that this presentation of the orality-based Indigenous avoids some of the undermining of meaning that accompanies a literacy-based format.
• Carry Forth the Stories: An Ethnographer's Journey into Native Oral Tradition. (Washington State University Press, 2017). This book-length "personal essay" brings together key lessons I've learned while working with Tribal elders and their communities over the last 40-plus years.  It is a reflection on both my professional and personal journey, each interwoven with the other, each interwoven with the power of story, storytelling and empathy.   
• Examples of a few of my recent guest lectures (outlines and notes): Salmon Always Goes Up River (which includes one of my all-time favorite stories), Eye Juggling,  Burnt Face, Indigenous Art,  Intro to the Indigenous,  The Wheel (image of Bighorn Fock Medicine Wheel), and Joe Medicine Crows'  Counting Coups (video)
• Living Stories: Rejuvenating a Sense of Place and Community Through Storytelling, Hailey Public Library, 13 January 2022 (YouTube video).
• Carry Forth the Stories: A Journey into Indigenous Oral Traditions with Implications for Our Humanity - Expanded Edition (Washington State University Press 2024). This memoir retains the content of the original awarding winning book, and adds to it new insights within the context of a university's General Education and service as a lay hospital chaplain.

Awards and Honors:

• Humanities Fellow, College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences, University of Idaho 2002-03 - "Sense of Place"
• Dr. Martin Luther King Distinguished Service Award, University of Idaho 2003
• Research Excellence Award, University of Idaho 2005
• UNITY Service Medallion, UNITY Student Organization and Office of Multicultural Affairs,  University of Idaho 2006
• Distinguished Humanities Professorship Award, College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences, University of Idaho 2011-12 - resulting in Turning of the Wheel: the Interplay between the Unique and Universal - a Humanities Exploration," a series of year-long events, talks, performances and exhibits, thirty-two in total, by University of Idaho faculty and graduate students.
• Teaching Excellence Award, University of Idaho 2012
• Evans Handcart Book Award, for Carry Forth the Stories from the Mountain West Center for Regional Studies, Utah State University 2018
• Outstanding Achievement in the Humanities Award from the Idaho Humanities Council 2023

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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