Native American scholar, author, artist, and civil rights activist Lois
Beardslee has won numerous awards for her work, including the Pulitzer
Prize-nominated Women’s Warrior Society. Her artwork is in private and public collections
worldwide, including the Smithsonian, the Royal Ontario Museum, and the
Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis. In
addition to painting, printmaking, and book illustration, Beardslee
practices rare traditional Ojibwe (Chippewa) art forms, such as
sweetgrass basketry, porcupine quillwork, birch bark cut-outs and
bitings, and beadwork. An adjunct instructor in communications at
Northwestern Michigan College, Beardslee also consults and teaches in
sociology, social work, education, literature, and fine arts at
universities nationwide.
Lois Beardslee divides her time between the family farm on Michigan’s
Leelanau Peninsula and family bush camps in northern Ontario. The
Cottage Book Shop has represented her for many years, carrying her
prints, traditional basketry, bark work, and quillwork. We also stock
her books Women’s Warrior Society, Not Far Away: The Real-life
Adventures of Ima Pipiig (AltaMira Press, 2007. pap $27.95), Rachel’s
Children (AltaMira Press, 2004. Pap. $19.95) and Lies to Live By
(Michigan State University Press, 2003. pap $19.95).
This book chronicles
Loreen Niewenhuis's latest adventure: a 1,000-mile walk along the shorelines of
all five Great Lakes. The book takes the reader on a ground-level walk through
the beauty, the history, and the tender ecology of Lakes Erie, Huron, Michigan,
Superior, and Ontario.
A 1,000-Mile Great Lakes Walk also
leads us on an exploration of self, as the author sets out on foot to explore a
region. Like her earlier book of a long trek around Lake Michigan, this
new grand hike on the shores of five magnificent bodies of freshwater explores
the natural and human history of the Great Lakes . . . and raises important
questions about preserving our wild places and protecting fragile ecosystems on
which we all depend.