Messengers of the Wind

For generations the lives of Native American women have been kept in the shadows. Now, in Messengers of the Wind, these extraordinary Americans illuminate their diverse traditions, roles, and present-day realities. For though they share common threads of experience and history, Native women do not inhabit one contained world with a specific name, but rather many worlds. Native American women old and young, from a variety of tribal groups, speak with eloquence and passion about their experience on the land and in urban areas; about their work as artists, activists, and healers; as grandmothers, mothers, and daughters; as modern professional women with a link to the past. On an Ojibway reservation, a grandmother faces arrest rather than relinquish treaty rights; an Inupiat woman shares her spiritual connection to the Alaskan landscape; an Upper Skagit elder speaks of ancient tribal values and ceremonies she is helping perpetuate. All the women testify to the struggle of keeping Native ways alive in a time and place constantly threatening to trample them. . And as each woman, renowned and obscure, tells her remarkable personal story, it is clear that each has tapped into the power that comes from within, and has reached back into a history that brings with it courage and hope. In strong, clear voices, Native women communicate the vision derived from their ancestors, which guides them as they forge new paths in a changing world.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.