Edward Benton Banai is a full-blooded Wisconsin 0jibway of the Fish Clan and a Spiritual Teacher of the Lac Court Orielles Band ofthe Ojibway Tribe. He writes about the Ojibwe people, explaining Ojibwe tradition, culture and philosophy and is the Executive Director of the Red School House, St. Paul, Minnesota, and is one of its orfiginal founders. The Red School House is an Indian-controlled, Indian-oriented (non-public) alternative school serving K-12 students. Under his leadership, the school has secured and maintained a distinctive posiffon in the St. Paul urban Indian community, with the support and cooperation of the parents of the students attending the school.

Born in Stillwater, OK, Berry is a librarian, published poet, and a traditional Stomp Dancer. He has a Masters in in Library and Information Sciences from the Univ. of Missouri, and is currently the Native American Studies Librarian in the Ethnic Studies Library at the Univ. of Calif., Berkeley.. His professional activities include being Past President of the American Indian Library Association, 1999-2000, and Past President of OSU's Native American Faculty & Staff Association, 1997-1999.  He has been awarded the John Cotton Dana Library Public Relations Award for participation in the "Plug into the World" campaign at the Edmon Low Library, 1997
AMIGOS Bibliographic Council, Professional Development Grant Award, 1996.

Moses Big Crow is the author of several books of folklore and oral history. Many of the stories included in his books have been passed down from his ancestors, who are of the Crazy Horse Clan.

Duane Big Eagle was born at the Indian Hospital in Claremore, Oklahoma, in May 1946. He has a B.A. degree from the University of California at Berkeley and has been writing and publishing poetry for twenty years. He has taught creative writing for sixteen years through the California Poets in the Schools program and is a past president of the Board of Directors of that organization. A lecturer in American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University, his new manuscript, "Birthplace: Poems and Paintingson the Modern World," is scheduled to be published by Clark City Press in Montana in 1994. "As an American Indian youth," he writes, "I was taught to value a connection with the land which sustains our lives. I learned early that individuality, creativity, self-expression, and love of beauty are essential to the survival of a whole and healthy person. And I experienced the roles that art, music, and poetry play in the passing of culture from one generation to another. These lessons and values have formed the person I have becomeÑ writer, painter, artist in education, community organizer, and cultural activist."

Tiana Bighorse is a member of the Navajo Nation. Born in 1917. Through her writing we are able to gain an authentic understanding and view of Navajo traditions, values and life.

Don Birchfield lives in Oklahoma. He has been editor of OKC CAMP Crier, contributing editor for the Raven Chronicles, Moccasin Telegraph, and Turtle Quarterly, was a guest co-editor of Callaloo, and is a book review editor of News From Indian Country. His work appears in Earth Song, Spirit Sky, and Looking At the Words of Our People.

Gloria Bird is co-winner of the Returning the Gift-Diane Decorah First Book Award for Poetry. Born in Sunnyside, Washington, in the Yakima Valley, she grew up on the Spokane Reservation and on the adjoining Colville Reservation where her mother now lives in Nespelem. A survivor of the reservation mission schools and BlA boarding schools, she has an M.A. in literature from the University of Arizona. Currently, she is working on a new manuscript of poetry and teaching creative writing and literature at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Sherwin Bitsui is originally from White Cone, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation. Currently, he lives in Tucson, Arizona. He is Dine of the Todich'ii'nii (Bitter Water Clan), born for the Tl'izilani (Many Goats Clan).  He holds an AFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts Creative Writing Program and is currently completing his studies at the University of Arizona. He is the recipient of the 2000-01 Individual Poet Grant from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, the 1999 Truman Capote Creative Writing Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Literary Residency Fellowship and more recently, a 2006 Whiting Writers' Award.  Sherwin has published his poems in American Poet, The Iowa Review, Frank (Paris), Lit Magazine, and elsewhere. His poems were also anthologized in Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century. Shapeshift is his first book.

1863-1950.  Black Elk, an Oglala Sioux, was born in 1863, in a time when the Sioux still controlled the northern plains. He was present at the masacre at Wounded Knee, which is considered the last military encounter between whites and Indians in North America. He also toured Europe with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, where he performed for Queen Victoria and other royalty. He seemes as impressed with the queen as with the Iron Horse, the railroad upon which he traveled to New York City, where the company boarded a ship to Europe. When Black Elk's "life story" originally recorded by John G. Neihardt in 1932, was reissued by the University of Nebraska Press in 1961 his name and story became widely known. Since that time the books describing his life and the customs of the Lakota have been translated into more than a dozen languages. Many believe that Black Elk Speaks: The Life story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux, University of Nebraska Press, 1979, is the manifesto of the Native American revival in the 1960s and 70s. A second text The Sixth Grandfather, Harper & Row, 1990, documents the sacred traditions of the Oglala Sioux. The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk/The Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux, University of Oklahoma Press, 1953 gives the reader a revealing look into the essence and importance of Native spirituality.