Lifelong Engagement with American Indian Traditions
The first book Fitzgerald recorded and edited was Yellowtail: Crow Medicine Man and Sun Dance Chief. It is the story of the late Thomas Yellowtail, one of the most honored American Indian spiritual leaders of the last century.
This book becomes the personal testament of a pivotal figure in recent Crow cultural history. The book describes in exquisite detail Yellowtail’s philosophy. Fitzgerald examines the place of the Sun Dance, and of the sacred, in the life and future of the Crow… It is a serious work of anthropology and history.
Choice Magazine
Fitzgerald first met Susie Yellowtail, who is now enshrined in the Montana Hall of Fame, when he was Joseph Epes Brown’s graduate teaching assistant at Indiana University, Bloomington, for “Religious Traditions of the North American Indians”. Fitzgerald spent the summer of 1971 living with Thomas and Susie Yellowtail on the Crow Indian Reservation in Wyola, Montana, where he participated in the tribal Sun Dance and was adopted into the Yellowtail family and the Crow tribe. Following Dr. Brown’s 1972 departure to Montana, Fitzgerald taught a course of the same name for two years in the Indiana University (Bloomington), now retired. Fitzgerald married his wife, Judith, in 1972. The Yellowtails introduced the Fitzgeralds to many spiritual leaders of other American Indian tribes. Over the next forty years Judith and Michael Fitzgerald spent extended periods of time visiting reservations and attending sacred ceremonies throughout the American West, including the sacred rites of the Crow, Sioux, Cheyenne, Shoshone, Bannock, and Apache Tribes. Janine Pease, founding president of the Little Big Horn College, National Indian Educator of the Year and a McArthur Genius Award winner, had this to say about Fitzgerald’s relationship with Indian people and cultures:
Michael Fitzgerald has heard the poignant narratives of the American Indian people, and has lived among the Crow people for extended periods of time since 1970. He has studied American Indian religious traditions on the earth, among the people, in ceremonies and family gatherings. We thank Fitzgerald for his deep-seated appreciation, honor, and respect for American Indian culture, its religion, language, and lifeways
These contacts led to the creation of a number of books and two documentary films on the American Indians.
All royalties from Fitzgerald’s books and films about American Indians are donated to different American Indian causes or used to perpetuate American Indian spiritual traditions. This includes the Smithsonian’s Museum of the American Indian, the American Indian College Fund, and the traditional ceremonies of the Crow, Lakota, Apache, and Shoshone.
As a fierce advocate of preserving indigenous languages, Fitzgerald is a co-founder of the Crow Language Consortium, a subsidiary of the Language Conservancy, and is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Language Conservancy. The Fitzgerald family provides ongoing financial contributions that include underwriting Crow and Shoshone language textbooks and the establishment of a permanent endowment for the Language Conservancy with the Bloomington Community Foundation.
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_O._Fitzgerald
Bloomingpedia (city of Bloomington, IN website): http://www.bloomingpedia.org/wiki/Michael_Fitzgerald
World Wisdom (publisher’s site): http://www.worldwisdom.com/public/authors/Michael-Fitzgerald.aspx
