James Welch - 1940
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Hot Springs County High in Wyoming
I. Biography
James Welch was born in 1940, in Browning, Montana. He went to school in Northern Montana at Blackfeet and Fort Belknap Reservation schools. After he attended the reservation schools he went to Northern Montana College
and later to the University of Minnesota. He then decided to go back to Montana to attend the University of Montana.
Two years ago, in 1997, James Welch won the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Native
Writers Circle. He won it for his excellence in Blackfeet/Gros Ventre Novelist and Poet. He won it for the way he writes about Indians. Most white writers who write about Indians,
write either about the sentimental or outrageous ways or conditions of the Indians life. James Welch does the exact opposite and therefore he was noticed for his achievements.
James Welch has written many books including:
Killing Custer (1994), The Indian Lawyer (1990), Winter in the Blood (1974), The Death of Jim Loney (1979), Fools Crow (1986), and Riding the Earthboy
(1971). These are just a few books that he has written. He is well known for his books as well as his poems which earned him a Lifetime Achievements
Award from the Native Writers Circle. The reason for which he has been given this award is for his excellence in native writing achievements.
James Welch lived on a reservation and went to its schools so he knew exactly how the Indians thought and what they had gone through. This knowledge of living with the
Indians gave his books the Indians' point of view, which indeed has made him a more worthwhile writer. People enjoy reading more than just the history books which make the
Indians look sentimental or outraged over the conditions of having the white man enter their lives. Living with the Indians in Montana is probably the reason for which he has
written books and poems about them. This excellent writer told the truth about Indian history as it really was.
The way that James Welch works is that he has written many books of over 124 Indian
tribes, including the following: Abenaki, Acoma, Alute, Aanishinabe, Apache, Athabascan, Blackfeet, Blackfoot, Blood, Cahuilla, California, Cayuga, Chemehuevi,
Cherokee, Cheyenne, Chickasaw, Chippewa, Choctaw, Coeur d'Alene, Colville, Conoy, Cree, Creek, Crow, Dakota, Delaware, Dene, Eskimo, Goshiute, Gros Ventre, Guajiro, Haida,
Hawaiian, Hidasta, Hopi, Huron, Inuit, Inupiaq, loquois, Jarnez (pueblo), Karuk, Kiowa, Klallam, Kootenia, Koyukon, Laguna (Pueblo), Lakota, Lenape, Maidu, Maya, Menominee,
Mesquakie, Metis, Micmac, Mohawk, Muskogee, Narragansett, Navajo, Nez Perce, Nootka, Oglala (Sioux), Okanagan, Ojibaway, Omaha, Onieda, Onondaga, Osage, Otoe, Otomi,
Ottawa, Papago, Paiute, Passamaquiddy, Paugusset, Pawnee, Penobscot, Pequot, Pima, Pomo, Pottawatomi, Powhatan, Pueblo, Quapaw, Saanich, Salish Saltwaux, Santa Caria
(Pueblo), Santa Domingo (Pueblo), Santee (Sioux), Shawnee, Seminole, Senca, Shoshone, Sicangu, Sioux, Skagit, Sokoki, Spokane, Stockbridge Munsee, Tarascan, Tewa, Tlingit,
Tuskarora, Wampanoag, Wasco, Washoe, Western Abenaki, Wyandot, Yakima, Yaqui, Yuchi, Yuman, Yupik, and Yurok.
This essay was submitted by a student of Kevin Brooke, a teacher at Hot Springs County
High in Thermopolis, Wyoming.