College welcomes American Indian poet

Flathead Valley Community College will welcome American Indian poet Lois Red Elk to present her poetry for the community Monday.

Red Elk’s book of poems, “Our Blood Remembers,” was published by FVCC’s Many Voices Press in 2011 and was honored with an award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas. “Our Blood Remembers” was also selected as a finalist for the High Plains Book Award.

Red Elk lives in Wolf Point and has been a television talk show host, FM radio broadcaster, actor, freelance writer, and teacher of high school English, poetry and American Indian language. Currently she is an adjunct professor at Fort Peck Community College on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation.

Red Elk has devoted her life to promoting and preserving Dakota/Lakota culture.

Award-winning American author and poet Adrian C. Louis commended Red Elk’s work, saying, “The poems make a circle from the old days and old ways to the present where ghosts of the past walk with the living. These are honest poems from a grassroots Dakota woman. They offer brilliant and insightful portrayals of native pain, hope and joy In the flickering campfires of these poems, the blood does remember.”

Free and open to the public, the reading will be held at 3 p.m. in room 140 inside Blake Hall on the college campus.

For more information, contact Lowell Jaeger at 756-3907 or ljaeger@fvcc.edu.