James Welch
Winter in the Blood, a novel published in 1974, is the work most closely associated with James Welch. Written in English, it stands at the center of his reputation as a Native American novelist and poet whose output moved across both fiction and verse.
Welch was born on November 18, 1940, in Browning, and he was educated at the University of Montana. He worked as both a poet and a novelist throughout his life, producing fiction in English as a Native American writer — a combination that shaped the particular character of his literary career. The novel that opened his reputation as a fiction writer grew from that foundation, and he continued to work across poetic and novelistic forms in the decades that followed.
His writing earned him the American Book Awards as well as the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, two distinct recognitions that together reflect the range of regard his work attracted. Welch died on August 4, 2003, in Missoula. The Chevalier, received during his lifetime, remains a concrete marker of the distance his fiction traveled from the town in Montana where he was born.
Quotes by James Welch
The economic piece is still missing, since it's so hard to attract industry to reservations, but spiritually and educationally, they're doing just fine. Each tribe has a community college now, and they teach the language, they teach the traditions.
In a lot of Indian societies, spirituality has been lost, I think it's still the best way of looking at the world for Indians - better than any organized religion in this country.
I wander around, get the lay of the land and try to imagine what kind of people would have lived there in that historical period. What would they eat? What kind of clothing would they wear? How did they shelter themselves? How did they get around?
I used to object to being called an Indian writer, and would always say I was a writer who happened to be an Indian, and who happened to write about Indians.
The title of the poems was The Only Bar in Dixon. We sent it out to The New Yorker on a fluke, and they took them and printed all three in the same issue.
The townspeople outside the reservations had a very superior attitude toward Indians, which was kind of funny, because they weren't very wealthy; they were on the fringes of society themselves.
Before, Indian people had been so defeated, they were always looking for outsiders, for the government, to somehow come in and fix things. But now, they seem to realize that they're the only ones who can save themselves.
To receive this award from an organization I admire so much makes me totally happy and grateful.