Elizabeth Woody

Last updated
Elizabeth Woody
Born1959
Ganado, Arizona
EducationBachelor's degree in Humanities, Master of Public Administration Degree
Alma materEvergreen State College in Olympia, Washington and Portland State University in Portland, Oregon
Occupation(s)Teacher, Poet, Artist

Elizabeth Woody (born 1959) is an American Navajo/Warm Springs/Wasco/Yakama artist, author, and educator. In March 2016, she was the first Native American to be named poet laureate of Oregon by Governor Kate Brown. [1] [2]

Contents

Background

Elizabeth Woody was born in Ganado, Arizona, in 1959. [3] She is born for Tódích'íinii (Bitter Water clan). Her maternal grandmother belongs to the Milee-thlama (People of the Hot Springs) and Wyampum peoples (People of the Echo of Water Upon Rocks). Her maternal grandfather's people were the middle Columbia River Chinook peoples. After studying at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, from 1980 to 1983, [3] she earned a bachelor's degree in humanities with an emphasis in English from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. In 2012 she received a Master of Public Administration Degree through the Executive Leadership Institute of the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government, Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. She is a founding and current member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs in Oregon.

Career

In 1992, she was an invited writer at the Returning the Gift Festival of Native Writers and a featured poet at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. James Welch, editor of the spring 1994 issue Ploughshares, includes her poetry that journal.

From 1994 to 1996, Woody taught creative writing at IAIA. She has worked in various programs teaching workshops, mentoring, as a consultant and lectures throughout the country. Woody has worked with the Telluride Native Writer's Forum, reading, panels, and workshops for Northwest Wordcraft Circle, Neah Bay, WA and Newport, Oregon; Southwest Native American High School Students, Telluride, CO; Young Writer's Conference and Performance, readings, illustration, poetry and short story workshops for Northwest Native American high school writers at Paschal Sherman Indian School, Omak, Washington; Grey Hills Academy Diné Fine Arts and Drama Festival, Tuba City, Arizona; and Flight of the Mind Writing Workshops for Women, McKenzie Bridge, Oregon.

As an artist, Woody has exhibited regionally and nationally. She participated in the Pacific Rim Gathering that culminated in a touring exhibition in Hité'emlkiliiksix, "Within the Circle of the Rim: Nations Gathering on Common Ground". [4] She has shown in "Submuloc Wohs/Columbus Show" and "For the Seventh Generation: Native American Artists Counter the Quincentenary", Columbus, New York. Both exhibitions toured. In Oregon, Woody served on the Northwest Native American Arts Services Task Force, sponsored by the Eastern Oregon Regional Arts Council and was one of the founding members of the Northwest Native American Writers Association. She was selected to be an apprentice in the Oregon Folk Arts Master-Apprenticeship, to learn traditional basket weaving from Margaret Jim-Pennah. Woody has also served as a juror for their program for two years, and has served on multi-disciplinary art fellowship jury panels for several arts organizations in the Pacific Northwest.

Woody is a board member of Soapstone, Inc., a women writer's retreat. [5] She served on the original Willamette University Advisory Council for Native Programs located in Salem, Oregon, and served as founding secretary on the founding board of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation [6] endowed by the Ford Foundation. She also served on the inaugural advisory board for Lewis and Clark College Graduate School of Education and Counseling conference, "Indigenous Ways of Knowing", [7] and as a leadership circle advisor for the Ford Foundation's feasibility study on a national Native American arts and culture fund. In 2005 Woody was approved by resolution to serve on the steering committee for the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians proposed Northwest Tribes Indian Policy Center. She also advises the Evergreen State College Native Arts Council who hosts a Native American Arts Fair at the Washington State History Museum.

She completed the Master of Public Administration Program in 2012 (emphasis in Environmental Policy, and Natural Resources Management) at the Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University. She formerly worked as Director of the Indigenous Leadership Program at the non-profit environmental organization, Ecotrust [8] of Portland, Oregon for the Ecotrust Indigenous Leadership Award. [9] After twelve years of service, and seven years of developing the program, Elizabeth moved to the "National Science Foundation's Center for Coastal Margin Observation and Prediction [10] located at Oregon Health and Science University. She worked as the K-12 Program Coordinator for three years. She is a program officer at the Meyer Memorial Trust located in Portland, Oregon.

Awards

Woody received an American Book Award in 1990 for her book Hand into Stone from the Before Columbus Foundation. [3] This book has been republished, including new prose and poetry, as Seven Hands Seven Hearts. In 1993 she received a Medicine Pathways for the Future Fellowship/Kellogg Fellowship from the American Indian Ambassadors Program of the Americans for Indian Opportunity. She is a recipient of the William Stafford Memorial Award for Poetry from the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association and was a finalist in the Oregon Book Awards in poetry for Luminaries of the Humble in 1995. She held a Brandywine Visiting Artist Fellowship [3] in 1986, and in 1997 she was awarded a J.T. Stewart Award and Fellowship by Hedgebrook, a retreat for women writers on Whidbey Island, Washington. In May 1997, she participated in a residency sponsored by Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco, California. The governor named her Poet Laureate of Oregon starting April 2016 for two years. [1]

Books by Elizabeth Woody

Poetry

Anthologies

Interviews and critical essays

Biographical information

Videos

Work published in translation

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Suzan Shown Harjo</span> Cheyenne-Holdulgee Muscogee activist

Suzan Shown Harjo is an American advocate for Native American rights. She is a poet, writer, lecturer, curator, and policy advocate who has helped Native peoples recover more than one million acres (4,000 km²) of tribal lands. After co-producing the first American Indian news show in the nation for WBAI radio while living in New York City, and producing other shows and theater, in 1974 she moved to Washington, D.C., to work on national policy issues. She served as Congressional liaison for Indian affairs in the President Jimmy Carter administration and later as president of the National Council of American Indians.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Janice Gould</span> American poet

Janice Gould (1949–2019) was a Koyangk'auwi Maidu writer and scholar. She was the author of Beneath My Heart, Earthquake Weather and co-editor with Dean Rader of Speak to Me Words: Essays on Contemporary American Indian Poetry. Her book Doubters and Dreamers (2011) was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award and the Binghamton University Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nora Marks Dauenhauer</span> Tlingit poet, short-story writer, and scholar (1927–2017)

Nora Marks Keixwnéi Dauenhauer was a Tlingit poet, short-story writer, and Tlingit language scholar from Alaska. She won an American Book Award for Russians in Tlingit America: The Battles of Sitka, 1802 And 1804. Nora was Alaska State Writer Laureate from 2012 - 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joy Harjo</span> American Poet Laureate

Joy Harjo is an American poet, musician, playwright, and author. She served as the 23rd United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold that honor. She was also only the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to have served three terms. Harjo is a member of the Muscogee Nation and belongs to Oce Vpofv. She is an important figure in the second wave of the literary Native American Renaissance of the late 20th century. She studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts, completed her undergraduate degree at University of New Mexico in 1976, and earned an MFA degree at the University of Iowa in its creative writing program.

Ofelia Zepeda is a Tohono O'odham poet and intellectual. She is Regents' Professor of Tohono O'odham language and linguistics and Director of the American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI) at The University of Arizona. Zepeda is the editor for Sun Tracks, a series of books that focuses on the work of Native American artists and writers, published by the University of Arizona Press.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simon J. Ortiz</span> American writer

Simon J. Ortiz is a Native American writer, poet, and enrolled member of the Pueblo of Acoma. Ortiz is one of the key figures in the second wave of what has been called the Native American Renaissance.

Ecotrust is a nonprofit organization based in Portland, Oregon, working to create social, economic, and environmental benefit.

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke is an American poet and editor. Her debut book, Dog Road Woman, won the American Book Award and was the first finalist of the Paterson Poetry Prize and Diane DeCora Award. Since then, she has written five more books and edited eight anthologies. She is known for addressing issues of culture, prejudice, rights, the environment, peace, violence, abuse, and labor in her poetry and other creative works.

Carol Lee Sanchez was a Native American poet, visual artist, essayist, and teacher.

Gail Tremblay was an American writer and artist from Washington State. She is known for weaving baskets from film footage that depicts Native American people, such as Western movies and anthropological documentaries. She received a Washington State Governor's Arts and Heritage Award in 2001.

Sandra Jean McPherson is an American poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joan Kane</span> American poet

Joan Naviyuk Kane is an Inupiaq American poet. In 2014, Kane was the Indigenous Writer-in-Residence at the School for Advanced Research. She was also a judge for the 2017 Griffin Poetry Prize. Kane was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2018. She has faculty appointments in the English departments of Harvard College, Tufts University, University of Massachusetts, Boston, and most recently, Reed College.

Annette Arkeketa is a writer, poet, and playwright, and a member of the Otoe-Missouria Tribe of Oklahoma. She has conducted professional workshops in these fields, in addition to the creative process, script consulting, and documentary film making. She directed Native American film studies at Comanche Nation College.

Gloria Bird is a Native American poet, essayist, teacher and a member of the Spokane Tribe in Washington State. Gloria spreads her work not only by writing for her but all Native American people. In her work, Bird’s main priority is to question and diminish harmful stereotypes placed on Native American people. Her focus in on educating about her community in accurate scripts without exploiting the culture.

Valerie Martínez is an American poet, writer, educator, arts administrator, consultant, and collaborative artist. She served as the poet laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico from 2008 to 2010.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heid E. Erdrich</span> Native American poet and author from Minnesota

Heid E. Erdrich is a poet, editor, and writer. Erdrich is Ojibwe enrolled at Turtle Mountain.

Lillian Pitt is a Native American artist from the Columbia River Plateau region of the Pacific Northwest. Her Native American name is Wak'amu, chosen because it represents a "stubborn plant that won't let go of the earth", referring to the long periods of time she spent wandering the hills during her childhood. Pitt is primarily known for her sculpting and mixed media artistry, which focuses on 12,000 years of Native American history and tradition of the Columbia River region.

Grace L. Dillon is an American academic and author. She is a professor in the Indigenous Nations Studies Program, in the School of Gender, Race, and Nations, at Portland State University. She received her PhD in literary studies with an emphasis in sixteenth-century literature, and her recent research regards science fiction studies.

Brandy Nālani McDougall is a Kānaka Maoli author, poet, educator, literary activist, and associate professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She is the Hawai'i State Poet Laureate for 2023–2025.

Roberta "Bobbie" Conner, also known as Sísaawipam, is a tribal historian, activist, and indigenous leader who traces her ancestry to the Umatilla, Cayuse, and Nez Perce tribes. Conner is known for her work as the Director of the Tamástslikt Cultural Institute in Pendleton, Oregon, which seeks to protect, preserve, and promote the culture of the Umatilla, Cayuse, and Walla Walla peoples. In her role at the Tamástslikt Cultural Institute Conner has worked to educate the public on and preserve Indigenous culture through the "We Are," "We Were," and "We Will Be" series of exhibits, and has mentored young scholars interested in tribal cultural preservation. Conner has also sought to educate the public and fight for Native American rights in her personal life as an activist, with a special emphasis on the impact of the division into Tribal Nations and segregation into boarding schools on indigenous cultures, tribal land rights, sustainability, and the repatriation of human remains and funerary objects to Native American lands.

References

  1. 1 2 Frazier, Laura (March 24, 2016). "Elizabeth Woody named Oregon's 8th Poet Laureate". The Oregonian . Retrieved 2016-09-08.
  2. ↑ Bancud, Michaela (September 6, 2016) [online date September 5]. "Book Report: A conversation with Oregon's new poet laureate". Portland Tribune . p. B10. Retrieved 2016-09-08.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Lester, Patrick D. The Biographical Directory of Native American Painters. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995: 628. ISBN   0-8061-9936-9.
  4. ↑ "Hité'emlkiliiksix: "Within the Circle of the Rim: Nations Gathering on Common Ground"". Archived from the original on 2016-03-15. Retrieved 2009-05-22.
  5. ↑ About Soapstone, Inc. Archived 2009-02-22 at the Wayback Machine (retrieved 22 May 2009)
  6. ↑ "Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Board of Directors". Archived from the original on 2013-10-29. (retrieved 25 October 2013)
  7. ↑ "Indigenous Ways of Knowing Project". Archived from the original on 2008-07-04. Retrieved 2009-05-22.
  8. ↑ Ecotrust Expert Bios. Archived 2008-05-17 at the Wayback Machine (retrieved 22 May 2009)
  9. ↑ "Ecotrust Indigenous Leadership Award". Archived from the original on 2014-02-20. Retrieved 2009-05-22.
  10. ↑ Collaboration in Curriculum. (pdf) Coastal Margin Observation and Prediction. (retrieved 22 May 2009)
  11. ↑ Old Shirts & New Skins. Archived 2009-08-04 at the Wayback Machine (retrieved 22 May 2009)
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.