New York Times bestselling author Angeline Boulley never thought she would be a writer. Now, with two acclaimed young adult thrillers under her belt, she has touched the lives of readers across the world, from her home in Michigan to the 22 countries holding foreign publication rights to her debut novel.
Boulley’s influence reached Central Oregon on Sunday, Oct. 6, when the author visited Bend’s High Desert Museum to deliver a speech chronicling her journey to publication at the age of 55 and sharing the importance of Native American voices in literature. The event drew a large audience and copies of Boulley’s books sold out within minutes afterwards.
The event was part of the High Desert Museum’s Indigenous Speakers Series, an initiative designed to highlight Indigenous voices from Central Oregon and beyond. As a proud member of Michigan’s Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, Boulley was thrilled to participate in the series and educate members of the Bend community on the importance of Native American storytelling.
“I think that books are good medicine,” Boulley said. “Good medicine is when you read a story and you learn, you feel connected to people maybe very different than yourself, and I just think storytelling has that power to connect us to universal humanity.”
Dana Whitelaw, Ph.D, executive director of the High Desert Museum, shares Boulley’s opinion on the power of literature to connect people across cultures and backgrounds.
“We love the literary arts at the Museum and when we can bring in fabulously acclaimed authors like [Boulley], we get excited because they are people that we have read, that have informed our work, and it elevates our work so much,” said Whitelaw.
Another point Boulley emphasized is the value of reading Indigenous stories by Indigenous authors rather than the glossed-over and inaccurate versions so often perpetuated in mainstream literature. According to the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, a branch of University of Wisconsin–Madison’s School of Education, 55 children’s or young adult books about Indigenous people were published in 2016, just 1.6 percent of all children’s books published that year. Of those books, only 23 were written by Indigenous authors. This has been a longstanding trend in the publishing industry, and despite the efforts of Boulley and her fellow Native American writers to rectify it, the issue remains prevalent.
“I think it’s very important for Native authors to be telling Native stories and that those be the stories that people are reading rather than a whitewashed or trauma-focused version that doesn’t bear resemblance to what I know to be true,” Boulley explained.
Whitelaw is a strong supporter of Boulley’s sentiment, and hopes that the Indigenous Speakers Series, which is set to continue for the foreseeable future, will bring truth about Native American experiences and identity to the people of Bend. While learning about Indigenous culture is important in any part of the nation, it is especially relevant to Central Oregonians, as Bend is built upon the ancestral land of the Warm Springs, Wasco and Northern Paiute peoples. Members of these tribes now reside just over an hour away on the Warm Springs Reservation, but their culture and legacy still play a major role in Bend’s history.
“The more that organizations like the High Desert Museum bring these stories and the awareness to our audience, the more well-versed we all are in the depth of stories and knowledge that we have,” said Whitelaw. “It’s an incredibly rich array of cultures that we have here.”
There is much to learn from Boulley’s groundbreaking portrayals of Indigenous women and communities, but as it turns out, there is just as much to learn from the author herself. She got the publishing deal for her first book, “Firekeeper’s Daughter,” in her fifties, and as she puts it, the story was 36 years in the making.
The idea for the book was sparked by an experience with a local drug investigation at the age of 18, and although the plot and characters continued to percolate in her mind for years following the incident, she did not believe that she could make it as a writer. Instead, she found a different passion—supporting Native American students in the public school system. However, as the years passed, she realized that her desire to write did not disappear with time, and made the decision to start the first draft of her book.
“There are so many people that feel like they have a story to tell and feel like, ‘Oh, maybe I’m too old, maybe I missed my chance,’ and really, I was a debut author at 55,” said Boulley. “Sharing my experience really might give hope to other people that want to tell their stories that it’s possible.”
By doing speaking engagements, Boulley hopes that people will see her success and understand that it is not unattainable. She didn’t start writing creatively until her forties. Her undergraduate degree is in Business and Political Science. She has no prestigious MFA or workshop experience to put on her resume. She is just a woman with a story to tell, and that is all it takes to be a writer.
In the end, Boulley’s writing and speaking serves a dual purpose—to bring representation to the members of her tribal community and to help white readers understand what it means to be Indigenous in modern America. Telling Native American stories may not reverse the damage of the past or fix the struggles faced by tribal communities today, but it sparks awareness, and that spark can start a flame. And as the daughter of a traditional Ojibwe firekeeper, this flame is one Boulley is well equipped to keep.
