Native America Calling: Exploring home, culture, and personal resolve with writers Joan Kane and Sherman Funmaker

Indianz.Com > News > Native America Calling: Exploring home, culture, and personal resolve with writers Joan Kane and Sherman Funmaker

Native America Calling

Listen to Native America Calling every weekday at 1pm Eastern.

Alternate Links: Native Voice One | NAC

Native America Calling: Exploring home, culture, and personal resolve with writers Joan Kane and Sherman Funmaker

Thursday, May 28, 2026

nativeamericacalling.com nativeamericacalling nativeamericacalling

Exploring home, culture, and personal resolve with writers Joan Kane and Sherman Funmaker

Iñupiaq poet Joan Kane explores themes of home and colonial dispossession in her new poetry collection, “with snow pouring southward past the window.”

Kane’s poems center on Iñupiaq worldviews and language, featuring masterful experimentation with form and imagery. Her critically acclaimed work has led to faculty appointments at Harvard University, Tufts University, and Reed College. She also recently edited “Circumpolar Connections: Creative Indigenous Geographies of the Arctic,” an anthology of Indigenous writings about the region.

Ho-Chunk elder Sherman Funmaker just released his debut collection of poems and essays in “Bear Tracks: Memories of a Ho-Chunk Elder.” He navigates the culture, family, loss, and racism he experienced growing up in Wisconsin.

Funmaker writes with both emotional depth and humor about such life-changing decisions as dropping out of high school to be a rock-and-roll drummer and finding success as a writer later in life.