1909-1976.  Ha-yen-doh-nees was a Seneca elder who was born in 1909. He recorded traditional Seneca legends and tales in a journal which was found and published after his death in 1976.

1921-2005. Raven Hail of Mesa, Arizona, was a Cherokee Indian from Oklahoma and Texas. Her stories and poems have been widely published. Her books include The Raven Speaks, Windsong, The Pleiades Stones, Native American Foods, and The Raven and the Redbird (a play in three acts).

Hale's work examines the social, psychological, and economic dimensions the Native American experience. Her essays and autobiographical fiction delineate reservation life, the adverse effects of poverty and alcoholism on families, and the struggle of Native Americans to maintain a sense of identity in contemporary American society. For example, Hale's first novel, The Owl's Song, focuses on a Native American boy who, after enduring an alcoholic father and his cousin's suicide, moves from his Idaho reservation to an urban setting where he is mistreated by his schoolmates. The Jailing of Cecelia Capture, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, is the story of a young Native woman who is jailed for drunk driving and welfare fraud.

Hale was raised on the Colville and Yakima Indian reservations of the Coeur d'Alene in Washington, moving frequently as her mother tried to elude her abusive, alcoholic husband. These early experiences fueled Hale's desire to become literate as she sought refuge in reading and writing: "I wrote poetry, stories, essays because of a deep personal need." Hale's marriage at sixteen resulted in divorce one year later, and these hardships-marriage, divorce, and single parenthood-figure prominently in her work. Hale received a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1974 and attended law school at Berkeley and Gonzaga Law School in Spokane, Washington. She received an M.A. in English from the University of California, Davis, in 1984 and began a career as visiting writer and lecturer. Critics marvel at Hale's accomplishments in light of the disadvantages she experienced, and Hale herself attributes her ability to surmount them to her Coeur d'Alene heritage, stating: "Courage has been bred into you. It's in your blood." - Essay by Linda Cullum

Author of Shasta Nation, 2004, Betty Lou Hall, who has spent her life recording and verifying Shasta oral history with documents, photographs, and interviews.

Co-author of Shasta Nation, 2004.

Hanc'ibyjim was a Maidu storyteller from California who lived at the turn of the century. His stories were collected by William Shipley of the University of California at Santa Cruz in The Maidu Indian Myths and Stories of Hanc'Ibyjim , and also published in Maidu Myths and Tales.

Born in Santa Ana, CA. After graduating from UCLA, Hashi-Hanta worked as a TV and radio newsperson and talk show host in Los Angeles. Was with landing party during the liberation effort at Alcatraz. Political activist and member of the American Indian Movement.  He is the author of Pathway to the Spirit World, 1995.

Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1951 and is an enrolled member of the Creek Tribe. She graduated in 1968 from the Institute of American Indian Arts and from the University of New Mexico in 1976. In 1978 she received an M.E A. in Creative Writing from the Iowa Writer's Workshop at the University of lowa. She also completed the film-making program at the Anthropology Film Center. She has published four books of poetry including She Had Some Horses, 1983 (Thunder's Mouth Press) and the award-winning In Mad Love and War , 1990 (Wesleyan University Press). Secrets from the Center of the World, 1989 (University of Arizona Press, Tucson) is a collaboration with photographer/astronomer Stephen Strom. Currently professor of English in the creative writing program at the University of New Mexico, Joy has received numerous awards, including the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, the American Book Award, and two National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships. Her forthcoming works include a children's book, The Goodluck Cat, (Harcourt Brace & Jovanovich), and an anthology of Native American women's writing, Reinventing the Enemy's Language, from the University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Joy gives poetry readings nationally and internationally, and she plays saxophone with her band, Poetic Justice.

Lisa Harjo is the executive director of the Denver Indian Center. This Center serves employment and training, early childhood education, adult education and senior citizens program and childcare.   She is the author of How to teach about American Indians : a guide for the school library media specialist, Indian country : a history of Native people in America, and Teaching about Native Americans.

Suzan Harjo was born in 1945 in El Reno, Oklahoma. She has been the president of the Morning Star Institute since 1984.  Author of Chief Offenders an article written by about anti-Native racism in sports for Native Peoples Magazine in Summer, 1999 and Harjo: Get educated from ESPN's "Outside the Lines" television special from Nov. 1999.