Listening with Fifteen Hearts: Life Stories of Women across Cultures

• Main Author: McBride, Bunny
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: DUNE: DigitalUNE 2013
• Subjects: Indigenous Studies; Arctic; Indian; elk; Mi’kmaq; sami
• Online Access: https://dune.une.edu/loring_lectures/2013/lecture/1

In this talk, McBride reflected on how gathering women's stories over the past four decades has impacted her work and life. Giving special focus to Wabanakis in Maine, she touched on recurrent themes she's explored with women around the world—such as work and motherhood, love and loss, strength and resilience. Women from many cultural niches have shared their stories with her, and she with readers—making connections and marking out bridges of common humanity through their words and hers, woven together on the pages of books, articles, and essays. Bunny McBride is an award winning author and veteran traveler. She has written for international newspapers and magazines about Chinese people in the aftermath of the communist Cultural Revolution, Tuareg camel nomads in the Sahara, threatened gorillas in Rwanda and lemurs in Madagascar, Sami reindeer herders in arctic Scandinavia, Maasai cattle herders in East Africa, and Mi’kmaq basketmakers in Aroostook County, Maine. With an MA in anthropology from Columbia University, she has taught at various institutions, and is currently an adjunct lecturer of anthropology at Kansas State University. She serves as president of the Women’s World Summit Foundation based in Geneva. McBride’s books include Women of the Dawn; Molly Spotted Elk: A Penobscot in Paris; Our Lives in Our Hands: Micmac Indian Basketmakers, and most recently Indians in Eden. For the National Park Service, she coauthored Asticou’s Island Domain, a 2-volume study focusing on Wabanaki life along the Maine coast. She has guest curated several major exhibits for the Abbe Museum based on her books, as well as one on the Rockefeller American Indian Art Collection. Working on a range of issues and projects with Maine tribes since 1981—including the Aroostook Band of Micmacs’ federal recognition effort—McBride received a special commendation from the Maine state legislature for her research and writing on the history of Wabanaki women. Boston Globe Sunday Magazine featured a long profile about her, and Maine Public Television made a documentary about her research and writing on Molly Spotted Elk. Beyond writing linked to Maine, McBride is coauthor of The National Audubon Society Field Guide to African Wildlife and the world’s leading cultural anthropology textbook, Cultural Anthropology, the Human Challenge, translated into Chinese and several other languages. She also has chapters in a dozen books. Her next book, From Indian Island to Omaha Beach: Charles Norman Shay, A Penobscot Indian War Hero (coauthored with her husband Harald Prins), is due to be published with University of Nebraska Press in 2014.