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Kent Nerburn is the highly acclaimed author of eight books on spiritual values and Native American themes. He received his B.A. in American Studies summa cum laude from the University of Minnesota and his Ph.D. in Theology and Art with distinction from Graduate Theological Union in conjunction with the University of California at Berkeley.
He has taught at Bemidji State University, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, and Red Lake High School on the Red Lake Ojibwe reservation, where he developed and directed Project Preserve, an award winning oral history project in which students collected and published the memories of tribal elders.
Among his published works are Simple Truths, Small Graces, Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace, A Haunting Reverence, and Road Angels: Searching for Home on America’s Coast of Dreams. He is best known for Letters to My Son, a book of thoughts and essays on issues of significance for a young person growing up in contemporary America, and Neither Wolf nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder, which won the Minnesota Book award for creative non-fiction and is part of the multi-cultural curriculum in many high schools, colleges, and universities across the United States and parts of Europe. He has also compiled several anthologies of Native American thought and has produced an updated version of The Soul of An Indian, Ohiyesa’s (Charles Alexander Eastman’s) classic exploration of Dakotah spirituality and values. His most recent work, Chief Joseph and the Flight of the Nez Perce: The Untold Story of an American Tragedy (HarperSanFrancisco, November, 2005) has received praise from mainstream historians — “a fine book full of fresh insights” (Robert Utley, The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull) — as well as Native Americans — “I believe everyone should read this book” (Leonard Peltier, Activist and author of My Life as a Sundance) and “the one account that addresses the whole story of the flight of the Nez Perce” (Ruth Wapato, descendant of the Chief Joseph band). Novelist Louise Erdrich called it “storytelling with a greatness of heart.”
He is widely sought after as a lecturer and and reader. He has spoken at universities and tribal colleges across the country and has been featured on both C-SPAN and The History Channel. His commentaries on the Red Lake shootings were published in newspapers from New York to the Bay Area and were broadcast on NPR affiliates, as well as through the Pacific News Service. He recently traveled to the Netherlands and Belgium where his book, Neither Wolf nor Dog, is the best-selling title of The Netherlands Association for North American Indians.
Nerburn lives in northern Minnesota with his wife, Louise Mengelkoch, and their son, Nicholas.