The Louis Littlecoon Oliver First Book Awards for Prose. Established in 1992 in conjunction with the Returning the Gift Festival, this award for a first book of prose by a North American Native author is named for Louis Littlecoon Oliver, a Muskogee elder whose first book was not published until he was in his 70s.

In his own words: I am an Oklahoman, a red man, as the name implies, yet my origins are somewhere along the Chattahoochee rivers which would be now in the state of Alabama. My people spoke the old Alabama language now practically extinct. Perhaps it is a fact that it was the oldest Indian language spoken in the history of the Muskogee of Creeks. Tho much of it is lost we speak a tongue similar to it. I'm proud of the few words I speak in Alabama, which is as old as the continent I live on. In all probability those old "bronze spatulas" that had the history of my people etched in Alabama are lost in the shifting sands of the Arkansas river and forever into the Great white waters. Only a vision could recall those words.

Actually my family name is Katcha or Tiger according to my line of Clanship. The United States Government agents did not understand fully the clan law and cared less, so they erred in recording our vital statistics. I am not that person the government so states that I am. I am happy to be that other person, who is of the golden Raccoon Clan of the old Indian town of Koweda, also partly of the Okfuskee town. Strangely, the Kowedas and Okfuskees spoke the same language, but there is a variation in the delivery and sound.

In the early 1960's, Mescalero Apache musician, A. Paul Ortega created a sound that forever revolutionized the landscape of Native American music. A respected medicine man, he effortlessly fused Native American healing traditions with the gentle strum of guitar, the stomp of bass drum and the mournful cry of harmonica. With blues-tinged vocals and storytelling that draw upon Native culture, Two Worlds and Three Worlds have gone on to become modern classics of contemporary Native American musical expression.

1939-1997 . Alfonso Alex Ortiz was born in San Juan Pueblo, New Mexico. He received his B.A. from the University of New Mexico in 1961 and his M.A. and Ph.d. from the University of Chicago in 1963 and 1967, respectively. Ortiz's career included assistant professor at Pitzer College, Claremont, California; professor, Princeton University, and professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico. Ortiz's interests included contemporary Indian Affairs; religion and society; and oral tradition. He also edited Native American writings.

"I've been a poet, writer, and storyteller for over thirty years, mainly trying to demystify language and enhance its meaning for me and readers and listeners. My teaching experience as a university instructor is extensive and well-established; I've taught for varying periods of time at the Institute of American Indian Arts, University of New Mexico, Navajo Community College, Sinte Gleska College, San Diego State University, College of Marin, Lewis & Clark College, Colorado College, and others. Usually I've taught Native American literature and creative writing (poetry and fiction). I've done poetry readings, some lectures, and storytellings across most of the United States, as well as several countries in Europe. I have three children, Raho Nez, Rainy Dawn, and Sara Marie. In the late I980's I held official tribal positions as Interpreter and 1st Lt. Governor of Acoma Pueblo, my native community, in New Mexico. Most of my cultural and literary work continues to focus on issues, concerns, and responsibilities we, as Native Americans, have for our land, culture, and community."

Louis Owens, of Choctaw, Cherokee and Irish American descent, was born in Lompoc, CA on July 18, 1948. He grew up in rural Mississippi and California. and worked as a forest ranger and firefighter for the U. S. Forest Service. He received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of California at Santa Barbara and his Ph.D. in 1981 from the University of California, Davis. Louis taught at the University of California at Davis and at Santa Cruz, California State University at Northridge, the University of New Mexico, and was Professor of English and Native American Studies and Director of Creative Writing at the University of California, Davis at the time of his death in July, 2002 . . .

Author of American Indian Sports Heritage, Joseph B. Oxendine, a Lumbee who grew up in a segregated Indian community in North Carolina, played professional baseball for three years prior to completing his doctoral degree at Boston University. He is chancellor of Pembroke State University and has published extensively in the fields of motor learning and sport psychology.