About

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Ancestry 

Joseph Edward Bruchac was raised on Splinterville Hill in Greenfield Center, New York, by his maternal grandparents, Marion Dunham and Jesse Bowman. His grandmother was the daughter of Edward Hobbs Dunham (1862–1934), a documented nineteenth-century black ash basketmaker in the Saratoga–Greenfield region. His grandfather, Jesse Bowman, was the son of Lewis Bowman (1844–1918), who was born in the Missisquoi–Brome region of Québec and later lived in Vermont and the upper Hudson Valley, including Cohoes and Greenfield, New York.

Available records identify Lewis Bowman’s mother as Sophie Sénécal dit Laframboise of Québec. The Sénécal dit Laframboise family is documented in the Saint-François–Pierreville region, an area historically associated with Odanak, one of the principal Abenaki communities in Québec, although a direct, document-based connection of this specific line to Odanak has not yet been established.

Additional records place Lewis Bowman within a broader kin network that includes families recorded as Bowman/Beaumier, Goyette/Guyette, and Phillips, who moved between southern Québec, Vermont, and eastern New York in the nineteenth century. This migration pattern corresponds to historically documented movements within the Abenaki homeland, extending from Odanak and Wôlinak (Bécancour) into the Champlain Valley and the upper Hudson.

In New York, Lewis Bowman lived in communities with longstanding Indigenous presence, including Cohoes—historically associated with the Van Slyck family and their descendants, including the Van Antwerp line—and later Saratoga and Greenfield, where Indigenous basketmaking families such as the Tahamonts are historically documented. Across earlier generations, related family lines are also documented in and around the multi-tribal community of Schaghticoke.

While much remains hidden, through multiple independently documented Hudson Valley family lines—including Van Slyck, Van Antwerp, Van Tassel, Storm, Cole, Devoe, Hobbs, and Dunham—the lineage includes individuals identified in the historical record as having Indigenous ancestry.

The family takes pride in its full ancestry, including Slovak, English, Dutch, and French heritage, as well as both documented and undocumented Indigenous ancestry. Joseph Bruchac’s documented direct lineage includes several converging lines to the seventeenth-century Munsee/Canarsee leader Catoneras; the influential Mohawk woman later recorded as Ots-Toch; Jacques "Itsitsiosokwachka" Cornelissen, who received from Mohawk leaders a 1667 deed to lands at Cohoes Falls—a site of profound cultural and spiritual importance at the Mohawk–Hudson confluence—and Broer Cornelis, Peacemaker of Early New York.

These relationships reflect broader patterns of kinship and intermarriage in the region rather than reliance on a single line of descent.

Work

Joseph Bruchac — Awards, Honors, and Filmography

Joe is the founder of the Greenfield Review which  has published over 150 multicultural books and anthologies of  contemporary poetry and fiction, giving voice to the otherwise voiceless  and marginalized. Including, Words from the House of the Dead: An Anthology of Prison Writings from Soledad, Breaking Silence: Asian American Authors (winner of an American Book Award) and Returning the Gift. Joe's poems, articles and stories have appeared in over 500 publications, from Akwesasne Notes and The American Poetry Review to National Geographic Magazine and Parabola.

Appointed as the 2023-2024 Poet Laureate of Saratoga Springs, NY, he just finished he second term for 2025 in this esteemed position. As an ambassador for poetry, the Poet Laureate is expected to promote citizens' awareness of poetry as well as heighten appreciation of the art.  

Joe is a prolific poet and author, who has had over 180 books published. In 1971 his first book of poetry entitled Indian Mountain and Other Poems was published. In 1996, he was awarded the Knickerbocker Award for Juvenile Literature, and is the winner of numerous other awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts writing fellowship and a Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship. He later received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas.

Joe worked for three years of volunteer teaching in West Africa from 1966-1969 which led to his becoming friends with some of the best known African writers of the 20th century, including Wole Soyinka, who would later win the Nobel prize for literature, and the Nigerian novelist  Chinua Achebe, returning to Ghana in 1979 to do research for his Ph.D and to Mali in 1992 (with his son James) to research traditional stories related to environmental survival among the Dogon people in the village of Tireli.

"One of my major influences was Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian author. His book Things Fall Apart is a masterpiece of storytelling and an example of how one can draw on one’s own folk culture. Chinua was a close friend and an advisor for my PhD."

Education & Achievements

Joe earned his B.A. from Cornell University, his Master's from Syracuse, and his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the Union Institute. A proud citizen of the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation (Band #1101), Joe's Abenaki (literally, dawn land) ancestry has inspired him to study deeply and write about important aspects of Indigenous traditions, peoples, and experiences in the Americas. 

"If you want to write, write every day.

And then, try to love the process of revision." 

Some of his notable works include Keepers of the Earth and Code Talker selected by TIME as among The 100 Best YA Books of All Time. At 84 winters young, Joe is still constantly reading, training, and learning. With every new book the journey of understanding and sharing begins anew. 

"Indigenous identity as a writer  is a combination of blood, heritage, and deep personal commitment, which  includes connection to your community and your elders.  “Give back at least as much as you are given,” as Stephen Laurent, an Abenaki elder who was a dear friend expressed it to me." 

Joe was also a varsity heavyweight wrestler at Cornell University. For more than five decades, he has also been a devoted student and instructor of the martial arts. He has been awarded the rank of black belt in Penjak Silat and Brazilian jiu-jistu.

He currently trains with his two sons Jesse Bowman, and James Edward at Alliance Saratoga Jiu Jitsu.

"In  addition to that eight years creating and coordinating the Skidmore College University Without Walls (UWW) program at Great Meadow Correctional Facility from 1974-1981, I have also done many writing workshops since 1971 in prisons from Maine to Alaska. Further, for two decades, my late wife Carol and I sent donated poetry books and   magazines to men and women in prison all over the American continent."