Autorentext

Chris Friday is professor of history and director of the Center for Pacific Northwest Studies at Western Washington University.

Klappentext

Don Smith - or Lelooska, as he was usually called - was a prominent Native American artist and storyteller in the Pacific Northwest. Born in 1933 of "mixed blood" Cherokee heritage, he was adopted as an adult by the prestigious Kwakiutl Sewid clan and had relationships with elders from a wide range of tribal backgrounds. Initially producing curio items for sale to tourists and regalia for Oregon Indians, Lelooska emerged in the late 1950s as one of a handful of artists who proved crucial to the renaissance of Northwest Coast Indian art. He also developed into a supreme performer and educator, staging shows of dances, songs, and storytelling. During the peak years, from the 1970s to the early 1990s, the family shows with Lelooska as the centerpiece attracted as many as 30,000 people annually.

In this book, historian and family friend Chris Friday shares and annotates interviews that he conducted with Lelooska, between 1993 and ending shortly before the artist's death, in 1996. This is the story of a man who reached, quite literally, a million or more people in his lifetime and whose life was at once exceptional and emblematic.

Zusammenfassung
Don Smith, or Lelooska, (1933-1996) was well-known in the Pacific Northwest as a Native American artist and storyteller. This book shares and annotates interviews that the author conducted with Lelooska between 1993 and 1996. In the process, it develops a portrait that is large enough to embrace the contradictory elements of Lelooska's life.

Inhalt

Preface

Acknowledgments

Note to the Reader

A Life (Un)masked: Placing personal narrative

Growing Up Indian

Family across the Generations

Learning from People

"A Kind of Hunger"

Opening the New Worlds

Producing Art

Learning from Experience

A Family Complex

New Foes, Old Friends

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index