We talk with Owen Wister Award recipient Joseph M. Marshall III about some pressing issues in Indian Country today and notable Native Americans whose influence has benefitted and exemplified Native people.
Joseph M. Marshall III can be intimidating. Like many Lakota men, he’s tall, lean, strong, with probing eyes that don’t miss anything. This Oglala/Sicangu Lakota doesn’t have to shout to get his point across. And he isn’t one to hold back on what he thinks.
He’s also respectful, honest, witty, and often hilarious. And he’s one of the best Native writers at work today, writing fiction and nonfiction about Lakotas. Which is why on June 24 in Rapid City, South Dakota—not too far from where Marshall was born—Western Writers of America is giving him the Owen Wister Award for lifetime contributions to Western literature.
Previous honorees include Pulitzer Prize winners N. Scott Momaday and Louise Erdrich; historians Eve Ball and Robert M. Utley; Cherokee scholar and novelist Robert J. Conley; and bestselling novelists Rudolfo Anaya, Elmore Leonard, and Tony Hillerman. Marshall will also be inducted into the Western Writers Hall of Fame, housed at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming.
Though our paths had crossed mostly at literary soirées, I first really got to know Marshall when he asked me to moderate a Q&A with him at a 2012 book-signing for The Lakota Way of Strength and Courage: Lessons in Resilience from the Bow and Arrow. I learned more about Lakota life from reading that book and handling that Q&A than I had from reading scores of other books.
But I didn’t drive from Santa Fe on a pleasant December day to Hatch, New Mexico, where Marshall has been recovering from a recent illness, to congratulate him on his latest honor. I wanted to get his take on the state of Native affairs—and to learn his picks for today’s 10 most influential Native Americans.
I arrive late, though no fault of my own. A washed-out road—this is New Mexico, after all—forced me to find an alternate route, but I reach the house where he has been staying with his first editor. The way she tells the story, he walked into the Casper (Wyoming) Star-Tribune and told her that the newspaper needed a column on Native issues and he should write it. He got the job.
Well, it’s not easy to tell Joe Marshall no.
We haven’t seen each other since 2016, when he gave a keynote address at the WWA convention in Cheyenne, Wyoming. He’s slightly thinner, the short dark hair showing more gray, but he looks fit and comfortable, dressed in blue jeans, a blue button-down shirt, jean jacket, and loafers.
He also has a visitor, a young Lakota woman driving back home to South Dakota. She wants to listen to part of the interview before hitting the road.
Born in 1945, Marshall grew on South Dakota’s Rosebud Reservation, where he was raised by his grandparents, who kept him out of school until he was 8 years old. He spoke Lakota and didn’t learn English until he finally attended school. “I ran away from school a lot,” he says. “I didn’t like that place.”
That voice hasn’t changed. Friendly but commanding. He often narrates audiobooks of his works. I love listening to those as much as I enjoy reading his prose.
But he didn’t quit. By high school he was writing. “I would write down what my grandparents told me, stories about our people, what they knew about history, cultural stories. I would write those just so I could remember them.”
After high school and college, he taught Native studies and Lakota language, and served in administrative positions with the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. He was one of the founders of Sinte Gleska University on the Rosebud Reservation.
In 1992, Soldiers Falling Into Camp: The Battles at the Rosebud and the Little Big Horn, cowritten with Robert Kammen and Frederick Lefthand, was published. Marshall hasn’t stopped since. The Day the World Ended at Little Bighorn: A Lakota History was a 2008 PEN/Beyond Margins Award winner. The Long Knives Are Crying, about the Battle of the Little Big Horn, was a 2009 WWA Spur Award finalist for Best Western Long Novel. The Lakota Way: Stories and Lessons for Living was a 2002 PEN Center USA West Award finalist.
When writers get together, we talk books. I ask if he ever read Mari Sandoz’s biography Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas, first published in 1942. He did, thought it was OK but relied too heavily on white accounts. That’s one reason, he says, he wanted to rework his first book and why The Day the World Ended at Little Bighorn followed white and Native perspectives of the battle.
“I read Sandoz,” I tell him. “I read Kingsley Bray’s Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life [the 2007 Spur Award winner for best nonfiction biography]. But it wasn’t until I read your The Journey of Crazy Horse: A Lakota History [2004] that I truly understood Crazy Horse.”
There’s that smile again. He thanks me. And it’s time to break for lunch. His visitor takes her leave and heads out, and we take my truck to The Pepper Pot, a longtime Hatch institution, to get our New Mexico green chile fix.
“When was the first time you ever ate Mexican food?” I ask.
He laughs. “Okinawa.”
My jaw drops.
The story gets even stranger. A Japanese couple ran the place he happened by while exploring a small Okinawan village. “I’d never smelled anything like that,” he recalls. “I think I ate everything they made. I’ve been eating it ever since.”
Full of green chile and iced tea, we return to the house and get to the serious stuff.
He champions Native rights. “I’m American,” he says. “But I am Lakota first—culturally, spiritually, by heritage.”
Are things better for Native peoples today?
“It depends on the mood I’m in when you ask,” he says. “I’m gonna say no. Because all you have to do is go on Facebook and look at posts.”
I bring up three critical concerns facing many Natives.
Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls
The problem of missing Indigenous women and girls is so shockingly prevalent, it has its own acronyms — MMIW, MMIWG — and groups dedicated to working on the
issue. It’s been a shocking reality for a long, long time, but the public — and Hollywood — were slow to react. But now it’s become a plot line in movies including Wind River and TV shows like Alaska Daily and Showtime’s docuseries Murder in Big Horn.
Marshall’s current novel-in-progress looks at the often-unreported disappearances of Native women. “It’s been going on for a long time all across Indian Country,” he says, “and certainly the Bureau of Indian Affairs is not, in my perspective, paying enough attention to it. They’re not devoting enough sources to it. All people who care, all the agencies, and all the organizations need to stand up and try to resolve the problem.”
Tattoo Elder Hands by Alejandra Rubio, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Woman Conference 2019
Boarding School Trauma
Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland has been overseeing a “Road to Healing” tour for victims and survivors of abuse at so-called Indian boarding schools, established to assimilate Native youth into white culture by methods such as cutting children’s hair preventing them from speaking their own language and practicing their religion.
“We have a long way to go,” Marshall says. “I think for the most part there’s still somewhat of a reluctance to bring it all to light. To admit that what happened with boarding schools—both the parochial and the government schools—was a travesty and it was certainly wrong. I find it hard to believe, but perhaps maybe what society was trying to do had some semblance of good intent. But that’s hard for me to say. It’s hard for most Native people to say that. Whatever the motivation was, what they inflicted is still being felt today. That trauma was handed down over generations. I’m reminded of the nine remains that were brought back from Carlisle [a Pennsylvania boarding school (1879–1918)] to Rosebud [Reservation] a couple of years ago to be reburied. That helped to a certain extent. At least
we brought them home, where they belong. So that’s part of the healing process. More of that sort of thing has to happen. But it has to begin with the government and white society saying this was a bad thing and what can we do to help you heal?”
Native American Child by Barry Goldwater (1956)
Crime on Reservations
Tribes still have complete jurisdiction only over nonmajor crimes involving only Native victims and Native perpetrators. And federal agencies seem to focus only on high-profile cases.
“Nothing has changed since the Major Crimes Act [enacted in 1885] for Native tribes,” Marshall says. “In some ways, tribes can’t prosecute non-Natives who commit crimes on tribal land. So that’s one issue which is particularly hard, but I think they can change laws and regulations. That falls into the lap of Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Department of Justice, and other agencies.”
“Can this change?” I ask hopefully.
“I hope so,” Marshall says. “We’re in charge of our own education, so that’s a step in the right direction.”
Native Profile, oil 16 x 12
We talk throughout the afternoon and make a good start on the purpose of my visit: to find out who Marshall would name to a list of 10 influential Indigenous people. Our enjoyable conversation in Hatch will continue over the phone and email until he eventually settles on the following list (presented in alphabetical order). His 10 choices of influential Natives show that some things have changed for the better.
“When I was asked to choose 10 influential Native/Indigenous people, I decided to focus on the word influential, and not the extent of fame or celebrity, although some have accomplished some level of that in their chosen endeavors and disciplines. I chose to focus on the kind of influence they wielded and how it directly benefitted and exemplified Native people. On the list are athletes, lawyers, performers, educators, poets, and writers.
“Each of them, by choice or by chance, entered fields of endeavor or occupations that were mainstays of white America, and excelled. In my opinion they excelled, not because they became versions of white Americans, but because they exemplified and applied the strongest virtues and abilities of Native people. Some on the list are known worldwide, some only in this country, or only in their own communities. But each of them had an impact in at least two ways: One, they set an example for other Native people to follow, and, two, they demonstrated to the white mainstream that Natives are as capable as anyone.
“Each of them likely found themselves facing an opportunity knowing that failure would be a judgment against their kind and of themselves individually, but they did not shirk the challenge. They might have, at times, stumbled and failed, but they persevered, and in doing so, they exhibited the most powerful influence of all—leadership by example.
“Each of them has my admiration and respect.”
1. Sharice Davids — HoChunk
A U.S. representative from the 3rd District in Kansas, elected in 2019, she became one of the first two Indigenous women (along with Deb Haaland) to serve in Congress. An attorney, she focuses on economic and community development and making healthcare more accessible and affordable to everyone. She’s also a former mixed martial arts fighter, which is “a very difficult thing for a Native person to do,” Marshall says, “and especially a Native woman. Sharice Davids participated quite well in a non-Native-dominated sport.”
2. Louise Erdrich — Turtle Mountain Chippewa
A writer of Native American literature and children’s books, she is best known as an award-winning novelist, from her first, 1984’s Love Medicine, to 2021’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Night Watchman. Her work explores her Native ancestry and cultural issues confronting modern-day Native Americans. She also owns Birchbark Books & Native Arts, an independent bookstore in Minneapolis. “She’s a great writer,” Marshall says. “I like her novels. And she’s a businesswoman.”
3. Donald Fixico — Sac and Fox
A writer, ethno-historian, and Distinguished Foundation Professor of History at Arizona State University, Fixico is also the founding director of the Center for Indigenous Nations Studies at the University of Kansas. He’s a widely respected thought leader and intellectual who writes about the Native American experience and history, especially in the West, often focusing on Indigenous urbanization, as in his books The Urban Indian Experience in America (2000) and Indian Resilience and Rebuilding: Indigenous Nations in the Modern American West (2013). He also served as the cultural and heritage advisor for the innovative new First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City, where his insights contrasting the linear thinking of Western culture and the holistic, nonlinear “circular” ways that Native Americans view the universe helped guide the design team. “He made sure that the Native perspective and Native representation are there,” Marshall says. “That’s not always the case. He’s a very strong leader in that respect.”
4. Debra Haaland — Laguna Pueblo
Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland was confirmed on March 15, 2021, the first Indigenous person to hold the post and the second Native to hold a Cabinet position. As interior secretary, she has oversight of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. She was previously a U.S. Congresswoman representing New Mexico’s 1st District. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English and later a juris doctorate. “She represents what a lot of Native women go through as single mothers,” Marshall says. “She started her own business to support herself, and [President] Biden didn’t just put her up for the job because she was a Native. He did it because she was qualified for the job.” Some of her top priorities include renewable energy and conservation, climate change and environmental justice, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, and government-to-government relationship with sovereign Tribal Nations.
5. Joy Harjo — Muscogee
A teacher, musician, poet, playwright, and author, Harjo served three terms (2019–2022) as 23rd poet laureate of the United States. She is the author of nine books of poetry and two award-winning children’s books—and she plays the saxophone. “I admire anybody who can do what they do and enjoy it,” Marshall says. “And she’s a poet. Poetry is something that terrifies me. I don’t write poetry. But it’s a unique way to express yourself, and she does that very well.”
6. Eldon Marshall — Sicangu Lakota
Marshall, a high school teacher and coach at White River (South Dakota) Public School, has taken his boys Class B basketball teams to the state tournament a record 13 consecutive years, won the tournament twice, and picked up his 400th career victory this season. “He’s not just a coach, he’s a great teacher,” Joe Marshall says. “And he’s had a lot of influence on his players, not just in basketball, but beyond.”
7. Billy Mills — Oglala Lakota
The three-time NCAA track champion and Olympic gold-medal winner from the 1964 Tokyo Olympic games cofounded a nonprofit that advocates for Native youth. Through Running Strong for American Indian Youth, Mills devotes his efforts to empowering and encouraging Native young people to follow their dreams. As the organization’s national spokesperson, he travels more than 300 days a year, visiting Native American communities around the country, talking to kids about living healthy and taking pride in their heritage. “He was everybody’s hero, and he certainly was mine because I was in high school when he won the gold medal,” Marshall says. “You aspire to be like someone like that. The fact that he was Lakota is, of course, the ultimate kind of model for someone like me.”
8. Debbie Reese — Nambé Pueblo
This educator founded American Indians in Children’s Literature, which works to ensure the accurate representation in literature. She worked on adapting Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States to create an edition specifically for young people. “What I like about her,” Marshall says, “is that she’s gearing all of her efforts toward children and young people so that literature for Native people reflects on them and that they learn that it’s authentic, it’s true, it’s real. There are few people like her.”
9. Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve — Sicangu Lakota
Since 1972, the 90-year-old, award-winning author has published more than 20 books on Native history, nonfiction, fiction, and poetry for children. She spent 40 years teaching English and serving as a counselor at Rapid City, South Dakota, public schools and at the Flandreau Indian School. President Clinton presented her with a National Humanities Medal in 2000. “She was putting out children’s book about Natives when that was not happening a lot,” Marshall says. “And she added a lot of role models for young readers in those stories.”
10. Wes Studi — Cherokee
The well-known, award-winning actor has appeared in many mainstream films such as Dances With Wolves, Last of the Mohicans, and Geronimo: An American Legend. Before finding those roles, Studi served in the Vietnam War and advocated for Native rights. Marshall, as a technical adviser, worked with Studi on the TNT miniseries Into the West. “He was a very good actor, a consummate actor,” Marshall recalls. “You could see that about him right away—how dedicated he was, how good he was at his craft. And he was a very personable guy.”
This article appears in our May/June 2023 issue, available on newsstands and the C&I Shop now.