Page 65 - 2020 Russell Catalogue

The Russell Educational Symposium
Michael Earl Craig’s most recent book of poems is Woods and Clouds Interchangeable (Wave Books, 2019). His other books are Talkativeness, Thin Kimono, Yes, Master, Can You Relax in My House, and the chapbook Jombang Jet. A recent Poet Laureate for the state of Montana, he lives in the Shields Valley near Livingston where he shoes horses for a living.
Mandy Smoker Broaddus belongs to the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes of the Fort Peck Reservation in north-eastern Montana. She is a graduate of Pepperdine University and the University of Montana. She also attended UCLA and the University of Colorado.
Smoker Broaddus currently works for Education Northwest as a Practice Expert in Indian Education. Her current work focuses on the work of equity and inclusion for Native education in the Pacific Northwest. She was formerly the Director of Indian Education for the Montana Office of Public Instruction for almost ten years where she saw statewide efforts related to closing the achievement gap and Indian Education for All. In 2015, she was named the Indian Educator of Year by the National Indian Education Association. She currently serves on the National Advisory Council on Indian Education as an appointee by President Barack Obama.
She has won a regional Emmy award for her work as a producer on the PBS documentary, Indian Relay. She has also published one collection of poetry entitled, Another Attempt at Rescue and coedited an anthology of poems entitled, I Go to the Ruined Place – Poems in Defense of Global
Human Rights.
She was also a school administrator in a rural public school in her home community of Frazer, Montana. She has taught courses at Fort Peck Community College and the University of Montana.
Chris La Tray is a writer and a walker. His first book, One-Sentence Journal: Short Poems and Essays From the World At Large (2018, Riverfeet Press) won the 2018 Montana Book Award and a 2019 High Plains Book Award.
His next book, Becoming Little Shell, will be published by Milkweed Editions in Spring 2021.
Chris is Chippewa-Cree Métis, and is an enrolled member of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians. He lives near Missoula, Montana.