Tahoma Goes to Tucson Book Festival

Post by Vera Marie

Tucson Festival of Books, March 2011

Quincy Tahoma went along with me to the Tucson Festival of Books on March 13. Although in his lifetime he was used to appearing in a lot of important places–like the San Francisco Golden Gate Exposition–this was a first for him. First time he was a BOOK.

Vera Marie with Quincy Tahoma, the book

Surely Tahoma must have enjoyed all the oohs and ahhs that his exciting paintings elicited from the browsers at the Tucson Book Festival. Thanks to the Western National Parks Association who housed seven exhibition tents for western parks plus their bookstore and signing tent, Tahoma got to meet his public for an hour on Sunday.

I like to think he was also there in spirit as I attended a session where four authors talked about writing mysteries with American Indian characters.

Craig Johnson (Wyoming-Crow and Cheyenne), Sara Sue Hoklotubbe (Oklahoma-Cherokee),Margaret Coel (Colorado/Wyoming-Arapaho) and Thomas Perry(New York State-Iroquois and Seneca).

They all paid tribute to Tony Hillerman, who made Navajo land and the Navajo people familiar to most Americans. When Tahoma was living in the 30′s-50′s books with Navajo heroes just did not exist. Instead he grew up on stereotypical movie images.

A Cherokee author on the panel of mystery writers, Sara Sue Hoklotubbe, said that she left her banking job to write because nobody was getting it right.  When she saw the movie Dances with Wolves, it was the last straw. “They went to some white guy to find the buffalo. I’m thinking, ‘What? The Indians can’t find a buffalo herd?’”

Thanks to this panel, my to-be-read pile grew as I now want to know more about Sara Sue’s Cherokee heroine, Craig Johnson‘s Wyoming contemporary Crow and Cheyenne stories, and Margaret Coel‘s mysteries with an Arapaho heroine who lives in Wyoming.

I also watched a fascinating slide show of pictures from the 1920s about an Eastern family visiting the Hopi reservation.  Carolyn O’Bagy Davis has written extensively about the Hopi people. She discovered a wonderful story about a family that took a cross country road trip back when the roads were little more than paths in many parts of the West.  The remaining family members gave her full access to journals and priceless photographs. The resulting book Hopi Summer has just been published, and received the honor of being chosen for One Book Arizona–a statewide reading project.

Carolyn has been sharing the photos with Hopis who are delighted to see a picture of their grandmother for the first time, or a photo of their mother as a beautiful young girl. Each photo led to stories and small adventures as people she met showed her old buildings and talked about old times.

Carolyn O'Bagy Davis talks about her book.

Her research journey sounds much like the journey that Charnell and I took as we unearthed information about Tahoma, and shared what we had uncovered with people who were eager to learn about their old friend. Carolyn is one of the people who offered advice on research and respecting native cultures as we looked for Tahoma’s story and we are grateful for her guidance.

Because of a scheduling conflict, of all sessions I SHOULD have heard, I missed the session on writing Native American biography, which I would certainly have loved to attend. Maybe next year. (March 10 and 11, 2012) Or maybe next year I’ll be SPEAKING in addition to listening.

The copyright to all photos used here belongs to Vera Marie Badertscher. You can read more about the Tucson Festival of Books at her other blog, A Traveler’s Library.

We need your help. Please tell us about places like Book Festivals and Indian Fairs near you that you think we should visit (with Tahoma, of course).