The sound of seagulls calling year round, and the Canada geese lifting off the unfrozen harbor of Harbor Springs make this small community the perfect place to write. The winter blizzards and being snowbound let the children have a day off from school and give the excuse to a writer to stay inside and work. With ski resorts in the hills behind Little Traverse Bay and the deepest natural harbor on the Great Lakes as a mecca for yachts in the summer, Harbor Springs is alive in all seasons.

Two new books for 2006 are the result of several years of my researching and writing. Both are about the Harbor Springs area, and both are about the Odawa, the local American Indian tribe. The first is a combination of old and new, featuring  Andrew J. Blackbird and Raymond Kiogima. For over twenty years Ray Kiogima has been teaching the Odawa language and compiling a dictionary. His work is being made available in the book that I edited, Odawa Language and Legends: Andrew J. Blackbird and Raymond Kiogima. Not only are over one thousand English to Odawa words included, but Kiogima has translated the stories that were put on tapes in the nineteen forties by his ancestors. He has also added some stories of his own, even one from his own experience with the legendary “Bearwalk.” The Blackbird part of the book is a reprinting of the 1887 history that includes Blackbird’s “Ottawa-Chippewa” grammar and vocabulary. Now people interested in the Odawa language can compare and contrast words in the same volume.

The second book is The Odawa Before and After Smallpox Bioterrorism. This book is being published by Edwin Mellon Press, an academic publisher in Upper New York State. The 1763 act of bioterrorism against the Waganakising Odawa by the British is set in the history of the area and of the Odawa people.

Not only have I had the privilege of living in Harbor Springs close to the Little Traverse Bands of Odawa Indians, but I have been included in many of their cultural ceremonies and events. They are my friends, and I honor and respect them.