Mixed Race Studies

Birding While Indian, A Mixed-Blood Memoir

Mad Creek Books (an imprint Ohio State University Press)
June 2023
246 pages
5.5 x 8.5 inches
6 Illustrations
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8142-5872-9
eBook (PDF): ISBN: 978-0-8142-8289-2

Thomas C. Gannon, Associate Professor of English and Ethnic Studies
University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Thomas C. Gannon’s Birding While Indian spans more than fifty years of childhood walks and adult road trips to deliver, via a compendium of birds recorded and revered, the author’s life as a part-Lakota inhabitant of the Great Plains. Great Horned Owl, Sandhill Crane, Dickcissel: such species form a kind of rosary, a corrective to the rosaries that evoke Gannon’s traumatic time in an Indian boarding school in South Dakota, his mother’s tears when coworkers called her “squaw,” and the violent erasure colonialism demanded of the Indigenous humans, animals, and land of the United States.

Birding has always been Gannon’s escape and solace. He later found similar solace in literature, particularly by Native authors. He draws on both throughout this expansive, hilarious, and humane memoir. An acerbic observer—of birds, of the aftershocks of history, and of human nature—Gannon navigates his obsession with the ostensibly objective avocation of birding and his own mixed-blood subjectivity, searching for that elusive Snowy Owl and his own identity. The result is a rich reflection not only on one man’s life but on the transformative power of building a deeper relationship with the natural world.

Table of Contents

• PREFACE: The Lifelook
• March 1965, Piss Hill: Great Horned Owl
• July 1967, Piss Hill: Lewis’s Woodpecker
• January 1968, Rapid Creek: Common Goldeneye
• June 1969, I-90: Western Meadowlark
• April 1970, Fort Pierre/Missouri River: Sandhill Crane
• June 1970, a Fort Pierre slough: Wood Duck
• August 1971, Saskatchewan: Western Grebe
• May 1977, a Rapid City marsh: Red-winged Blackbird
• June 1978, Spearfish Canyon: American Dipper
• June 1979, a Pennington County dirt road: Common Nighthawk
• August 1981, Old Faithful: Common Raven
• June 1983, a Pennington County dirt road: Long-billed Curlew
• June 1985, Skyline Drive: Field Sparrow
• June 1985, Fort Morgan, CO: House Finch
• September 1987, northern Black Hills: Mourning Dove
• December 1987, Belle Fourche, SD: [Species Unknown]
• January 1989, Rapid City, SD: European Starling
• January 1991, Gavins Point Dam: Long-tailed Duck
• April 2001, U of Iowa English-Philosophy Building: Common Grackle
• February 2003, Kirk Funeral Home: Prairie Falcon
• April 2003, U of Iowa English-Philosophy Building: Northern Cardinal
• May 2003, Clay County Park: Bald Eagle
• June 2004, Ardmore, OK: Northern Mockingbird
• June 2005, Folsom Children’s Zoo: White Stork
• June 2006, Crazy Horse Memorial: Turkey Vulture
• July 2008, Kountze Lake: Snowy Egret
• August 2008, Fontenelle Forest: House Wren
• May 2009, the lake beside Lakeside, NE: Black-necked Stilt
• May 2009, Devils Tower: American Goldfinch
• May 2009, Little Bighorn Battlefield: Eurasian Collared-Dove
• May 2009, Bowdoin National Wildlife Refuge: Marbled Godwit
• July 2009, Pioneers Park: Brown-headed Cowbird
• June 2010, Idyllwild, CA: Steller’s Jay
• June 2010, Spirit Mound: Dickcissel
• May 2011, Wilderness Park: Veery
• December 2011, Highway 385: Ferruginous Hawk
• May 2012, Indian Cave State Park: Chuck-Will’s-Widow
• June 2012, Custer State Park: Canyon Wren
• June 2012, Millwood State Park: Black-bellied Whistling-Duck
• July 2012, Newton Hills State Park: Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
• July 2012, Morrison Park: Lesser Goldfinch
• May 2013, Pawnee Lake State Recreation Area: Bonaparte’s Gull
• May 2014, El Segundo Beach: Brown Pelican
• March 2015, Pawnee Lake State Recreation Area: American Robin
• July 2016, Medicine Bow National Forest—Vedauwoo: Dusky Flycatcher
• November 2017, Lewis and Clark Lake: Snowy Owl
• March 2018, West Platte River Drive: Whooping Crane
• May 2018, Little Bighorn Battlefield: Red-tailed Hawk
• CODA: Birding While Indian
• Works Cited and Sources Consulted