Singing an Indian Song: A Biography of D’Arcy McNickle

One of the foremost Native American intellectuals of his generation (1904-77), D’Arcy McNickle is best known today for the American Indian history center that carries his name at the Newberry Library in Chicago, and for his novels, The Surrounded, Runner in the Sun, and Wind from an Enemy Sky. A historian and novelist, he was also an anthropologist, Bureau of Indian Affairs official during the heady days of the Indian New Deal, teacher, and founding member of the National Congress of American Indians. The child of a Métis mother and white father, he was an enrolled member of the Flathead Tribe of Montana. But first, and largely by choice, he was a Native American who sought to restore pride and self-determination to all Native American people.

Based on a wide range of previously untapped sources, this first full-length biogrpahy traces the course of McNickle’s life from the reservation of his childhood through a career of major import to American Indian political and cultural affairs. In so doing it reveals a man who affirmed his own heritage while giving a collective Indian voice to many who had previously seen themselves only in a tribal context.

Dorothy R. Parker is an assistant professor of history at Eastern New Mexico University. Her publications include Phoenix Indian School: The Second Half-Century and articles and reviews in the American Indian Culture and Research Journal and elsewhere.