"Everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it,
and the imagination to improvise."
Sylvia Plath
b.1932 - d. 1963
So, I like to write.
I enjoy writing. I have published newspaper, journal, and magazine articles. I have also done my fair share of book chapters, encyclopedia entries, book reviews, manuscript reviews, and blogging entries. I even wrote a book. Channeling my academically driven writing style to a public audience has stretched my ability to write significantly. There is no denying a social science background in my writing today as evidenced by my style right down to word choice - I make no apologies for that.
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But, today, I get to write about different subjects and I do not have to do it for tenure or for publishers with deadlines -only for myself and others who choose to read it. My social science perspective involves examining multiple layers of an issue. Very rarely is a social issue, or most things actually, experienced or described in 'black and white' terms. If only life were that simple! Social scientists examine it all - the black, the white and especially the grey in between.
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My profession exists because of the 'grey.' Take poverty
for example. There is no singular cause of poverty. I think
of poverty as the epicenter of an unsteady wheel wherein
the spokes on the wheel - such as access to good healthcare,
transportation, groceries, affordable housing, childcare,
living wage jobs, etc., are absent, weak, and/or unstable.
The wheel will not move forward easily and in fact may feel
like it is not moving at all. Just when someone feels like
they are getting ahead, an unexpected life circumstance
(one of the spokes) interrupts the wheel's pace, perhaps
even puncturing it. This can easily lead someone to an
economic standstill or downward spiral.
Those living in poverty as well as those living in the economic margins do so with wobbly wheels. There is no quick fix to poverty and if there were, it would have been resolved a long time ago. But, I believe if we all invest in our community just a bit more, we can balance the wheels for others and live more purposive lives.
Some of my work...
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Other Selected Works...
Journal Articles
'To Hell with the Wigs!' Native American Representation and Resistance at the World's Columbian Exposition, American Indian Quarterly, Fall, 2012
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A Legacy of Forced Removal: the Removal of the Miami Tribe, International Journal of Population Geography, March 2003
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Books Chapters
Psychological & Emotional Problems, In Encyclopedia of American Indian Issues Today, Russell Lawson, ed. 2013.
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Miami Indian Removal, In Encyclopedia of American Indian Removal, Daniel Littlefield, Jr, & James Parins, eds. 2011.
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The Agency of Language Ideologies in Miami Indian Recovery, In Ethnographic Contributions to the Study of Endangered Languages, Tania Granadillo & Heidi Orcutt-Gachiri, eds. 2011.
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Book
Contested Territories: Native Americans and Non-Natives in the Lower Great Lakes, 1700-1850, Charles Beatty Medina & Melissa Rinehart, eds. 2012
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Why the Cultural Conversation Should Never Stop
Huffington Post, May 26, 2012
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