D'Arcy McNickle

D'Arcy McNickle
Born January 14, 1904
St. Ignatius, Montana[1]
Died October 10, 1977(1977-10-10) (aged 73)
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Occupation Anthropologist, Novelist, Political Activist[2]
Alma mater University of Montana (1921-1925)
Oxford University (1925-1926)
University of Grenoble (1926-1933)
Notable works The Surrounded
The Hawk Is Hungry and Other Stories

(William) D'Arcy McNickle (January 14, 1904 – October 10, 1977) was a writer, Native American activist, college professor, and anthropologist.

Biography

D’Arcy McNickle, an enrolled Salish Kootenai on the Flathead Indian Reservation, became one of the most prominent twentieth-century American Indian activists. He was born on January 14, 1904, to an Irish father, William McNickle, and a full Cree Métis mother, Philomene Parenteau. His mother fled to Montana to escape the Metis revolution and eventually found solace in the Flathead reservation.[3] He grew up on the Flathead Reservation in St. Ignatius, Montana and went to mission and non-reservation boarding schools. At the age of seventeen, he gained attendance to the University of Montana where he attended from the years 1921-1925. This is where he found his love for language and began to pursue his wordsmith qualities, where he studied Greek and Latin.[4] In 1925 McNickle sold his land allotment on the Flathead Reservation so that he could raise the money necessary to study abroad at Oxford University and the University of Grenoble. After returning to the United States, McNickle lived in New York City until he was hired by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1936.[5][6]

McNickle worked under Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier during the 1930s and 1940s. The Bureau of Indian Affairs first hired him as an administrative assistant, but by 1950 he had been appointed chief of the tribal relations branch, and he soon became an expert.[7] He was appointed the director of the University of Colorado's American Indian Development, Inc. in 1952, and received an honorary Doctor of Science degree in 1966. Later that year, he moved to what is now the University of Regina, to create the anthropology department. In 1972, he helped create the Center for the History of the American Indian in Chicago's Newberry Library; the center was named in his honor in 1984. Also named in his honor was the library at the Salish Kootenai College on the Flathead Reservation.[8]

McNickle was also instrumental in drafting the "Declaration of Indian Purpose" for the 1961 American Indian Chicago Conference, helped found the National Congress of American Indians, and was named a fellow of the American Anthropological Association.[8]

McNickle was married three times: to Joran Jacobine Birkeland from 1926–1938; to Roma Kaye Haufman from 1939–1967; and to his AID co-worker, sociologist Viola Gertrude Pfrommer, from 1969-1977. He had two daughters, Antoinette Marie Parenteau McNickle (with Joran) and Kathleen D'Arcy McNickle (with Roma). He died of a heart attack in October 1977.[8]

The Surrounded

McNickle's best-known literary contribution was his novel The Surrounded, which tells of Archilde Leon, a young half-Salish male returning to the Flathead Indian Reservation who finds that he cannot communicate with either his white (Spanish) father or his traditionalist Indian mother. The relationship between him and his parents become strained when they are against him taking his passions to the big city far away from home.[9] Archilde begins to find his place on the reservation after one of the elders, Modeste, teaches him the stories of Salish history, and Archilde reconciles with his father and adopts his mother's Indian traditions. However, at the end of the novel, he is wrongly accused of two murders (one committed by his mother) and surrenders in a scene that represents the book's title.

This is a compilation of sixteen stories that pave the way to explain McNickle's literary style. It was published in 1992 and contains some of McNickle's best works of literature. The compilation contains:

.[10]

Organizations

Literary contributions

American Indian Chicago Conference

June 1961

References

  1. ↑ Glider, Don. "D'Arcy McNickle - Gifted author of Native American Literature". Old Missoula. Retrieved 22 May 2016.
  2. ↑ Kent, Alicia. "D'Arcy McNickle". The Literary Encyclopedia. Retrieved 22 May 2016.
  3. ↑ "D'Arcy McNickle". Cengage Learning. Retrieved 23 May 2016.
  4. ↑ "D'Arcy McNickle". Encyclopedia.com. The Gale Group Inc. Retrieved 22 May 2016.
  5. ↑ Dorothy R. Parker, Singing an Indian Song: A Biography of D’Arcy McNickle (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 22-27, 68. Dorothy Parker, “D’Arcy McNickle,” in The New Warriors: Native American Leaders since 1900 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 98-99.
  6. ↑ Tribune Staff. "125 Montana Newsmakers: D'Arcy McNickle". Great Falls Tribune. Retrieved 26 August 2011.
  7. ↑ Parker, Singing, 122.
  8. 1 2 3 Biography at the Newberry Library website.
  9. ↑ L.M. Fletcher, Matthew. "Carole Goldberg on D’arcy McNickle’s The Surrounded". Turtle Talk. Retrieved 22 May 2016.
  10. ↑ "The Hawk is Hungry and Other Stories". The University of Arizona Press. The University of Arizona Press. Retrieved 25 May 2016.
  11. ↑ Vince Devlin (2012-03-28). "Film shares Arlee teacher's success at instilling tribal perspective". The Missoulian. Retrieved 2012-09-06.

Academic criticism

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