2009 Lifetime Achievement Award

Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas

Press Release August 1, 2009

Jack D. Forbes (Powhatan-Delaware) of Davis, California, is the 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award winner from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas. Dr. Forbes, professor emeritus and former chair of Native American Studies at the University of California at Davis, is a historian, essayist, novelist, and poet, the author of more than forty books and monographs. He was born in Long Beach, California on January 7, 1934. He received his Ph. D. from the University of Southern California in 1959, after having obtained his bachelor’s degree from Glendale College in 1953. Beginning with Apache, Navaho and Spaniard in 1960, some of his subsequent works in history include The Indian in America’s Past (1964), Native Americans of California and Nevada (1968), Aztecas del Norte: The Chicanos of Aztlan (1973), Native American Higher Education: The Struggle for the Creation of D-Q University (1975), A World Ruled by Cannibals: The Wetiko Disease of Aggression, Violence, and Imperialism (1979), Black Africans and Native Americans (1988), Columbus and Other Cannibals (1992), and The American Discovery of Europe (2007). His poetry collections include Middle Continent People (1986), Naming Our Land, Reclaiming Our Land (1992), El-Lay Riots (1992), and What is Time? (1997), and What is Space? (2001). A book of short fiction, Only Approved Indians (1995), and Red Blood: A Novel (1997), represent his work in fiction.

Professor Forbes will be honored, along with the winners of the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas’ First Book Awards for Poetry and Prose, during the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers Festival at the University of Science and Art in Oklahoma, in Chickasha, Oklahoma, in February of 2010. Specific places and times for all accompanying events---book signings, readings, banquet, etc.---will be announced at a later date.