Lorna Rainey is a Native New Yorker who identifies with her dual heritage. On her maternal side, she is a descendant of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. Her paternal great-grandfather, the Hon. Joseph H. Rainey, was America’s first Black Congressman.

An advocate of communication, LORNA began her love affair with language with Latin in the fifth grade, French in the sixth and German in the seventh. Since she was raised an Episcopalian, the study of classic Latin was very advantageous during High Mass which was entirely in Latin. “It was truly amazing to realize how much of English, and many other languages, has Latin roots. Even now, I am able to understand many words in other foreign languages because of my study of Latin. It has been a tremendous advantage,” she said.

In High School she continued her Latin and German studies and went on to become a German tutor for other students. For her excellence in the language, she was awarded a scholarship to a total immersion summer session at the University of Kansas. Back in New York for her freshman year of college, LORNA chose German as her major, with a spilt minor in Linguistics and Ancient History. Originally, she intended to be a German-English literary translator, but after years of study was informed that German children are taught English as a required element in school; therefore, most German authors are perfectly capable of translating their own books. She has always been involved in communication….as a copywriter at a radio station and for her own ad agency, as a teacher of grammar and pronunciation at a broadcasting school and as a voice-over announcer. She credits her love of language with the decision to finally become an author.

Alex Ramirez is a Costanoan author and illustrator who Ramirez traces his ancestry to his many-tims great grandfather, Amadro Yeuschorom, one of the first California Ohlone to be baptized by Fr. Junipero Sirra in 1774. After meeting Linda Yamane, who was working on reconstructing old stories from notes in Spanish left by a 1930's anthropologist, he was interested in recalling what he could of his own grandfather, Juan Onesimo, which lead to his 1991 book of traditional tales, Tjatjakiy-Matchan (Coyote): A Legend from Carmel Valley.

Suzanne S. Rancourt was born and raised in the mountains of westcentral Maine and currently resides in Stony Creek, New York. She has had extensive counseling experience as well as herbal training. Her occupational diversity and philosophy have taken her to schools, stages, and conferences nationwide. Currently, Suzanne is exploring certification in writing therapy (much like art therapy). Her work has appeared in various publications including Mildred and Tamaqua.

Richard Red Hawk is the pseudonym under which noted Wyandot author and editor Clifford Trafzer has written a number of children's books with a Native American perspective, including creation stories and alphabet learning books.

Delphine Red Shirt, Oglala Lakota, spent her earliest years off the reservation in a small town in northern Nebraska where she attended public school, learning to speak English for the first time. After her family returned to the reservation, she first attended government schools and later the Red Cloud Indian School, a Catholic high school in Pine Ridge. She attended Regis College in Denver, with a major in Accounting and a minor in History.

Delphine has been a member of the United States Marine Corps. She served as the Chairperson of the United Nations NGO Committee on the International Decade of the World's Indigenous People: 1995-96, and as the United Nations Representative for the Four Directions Council: International Indigenous Organization with access to the UN from 1994 to 1997. During this time she also received her Master of Arts in Liberal Studies in Creative Writing from Wesleyan University and was an Advisor to Native American Students at Yale University . . .

1920-1998.  William (Bill) Ronald Reid (January 12, 1920 – March 13, 1998) was a Canadian artist whose works included jewelry, sculpture and painting. He was born to a father of European descent and a mother from the Haida (one of the First Nations of the Pacific coast) in Victoria, British Columbia. He developed a keen interest in Haida art while working as a radio announcer in Toronto, where he also studied jewelry making, having first learnt about his heritage from his maternal grandfather, who had himself been trained by Charles Edenshaw, a Haida artist of great renown.

In 1951 he returned to Vancouver and became greatly interested in the works of Edenshaw, working to understand the symbolism of his work, much of which had been lost along with the many Haida traditions. During this time he also worked on salvaging artifacts, including many intricately carved totem poles which were then moldering in abandoned village sites, and aided in the partial reconstruction of a village in the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology . . .

Carter Revard was born March 25, 1931 in Pawhuska, OK. He is part Osage on his father's side, and was given his Osage name in 1952 in Pawhuska by his grandmother, Mrs. Josephine Jump. He grew up in the Buck Creek Valley twenty miles east of Pawhuska, working in the hay and harvest fields, training greyhounds, and graduating as did his six brothers and sisters from Buck Creek School (one room, eight grades), where he and his twin sister did the janitoring in their eighth grade year. He graduated from Bartlesville College High, winning a radio quiz scholarship to the University of Tulsa, where he took a B.A. in 1952. He then took a B.A. from Oxford University with the help of a Rhodes Scholarship and support from Professor Franklin Eikenberry of the University of Tulsa, who also helped him go on to a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1959. Upon receiving his degree, Carter taught at Amherst College. Since 1961 he has taught at Washington University, St. Louis, and as a Visiting Professor at the University of Tulsa and University of Oklahoma. His scholarly work has been in medieval English literature [manuscripts, patrons, social contexts], linguistics, and American Indian literature. Two collections of his poems have been published by Point Riders Press in Oklahoma: Ponca War Dancers (1980) and Cowboys and Indians Christmas Shopping (1992). More recently, An Eagle Nation and Family Matters, Tribal Affairs have been published by the University of Arizona Press . . .

Author of an autobiographical memoir Red World and White: Memories of a Chippewa Boyhood, in 1996, in which he tells of food-gathering, fashioning bark canoes and wigwams, curing deerskin, playing games, and participating in sacred rituals. These customs were to be cast aside, however, when he was taken to a white school in an effort to assimilate him into white society.

Wendy Rose was born Bronwen Elizabeth Edwards on May 7, 1948, in Oakland, California. She came from a mixed-blood family (her father was Hopi; her mother could trace her lineage from both Miwok and European descent). As a teenager, she dropped out of high school and became connected with the bohemian scene in San Francisco. Her experiences in the city and the struggle in finding her identity within her mixed lineage would be major influences on the poetry she was then beginning, and works she would later produce. In 1966, Rose began a scholastic endeavor that would carry her through 1980. Through these years, she was enrolled in Cabrillo and Contra Costa Junior Colleges and the University of California, Berkeley, where she would go on to complete her Ph.D. in Anthropology. Balancing her academic interests with her artistic, Rose published five volumes of poetry during this period of her life. Since completing her Ph.D., Rose has remained in the world of academia, heading the American Indian Studies Program at Fresno City College in Fresno, California. She has been active in such divergent roles as teacher, researcher, consultant, editor, panelist, bibliographer, and advisor. She is a member of the American Federation of Teachers and has also served as a facilitator for the Association of Non-Federally Recognized California Tribes. Such diversity is also characteristic of Rose as an artist, who not only writes, but draws and paints as well . . .