Wendy Rose

In the introduction of her retrospective collection Bone Dance (1994), she states that, "the personal is political." As scholar David Perron so eloquently puts it: “We come to understand that the diversity of Rose's poetry is not about distinctions, but about wholeness. Her contempt for the "whiteshaman" is out of the lack of wholeness which they represent, a wholeness which she has struggled to define in herself and her work. As she was struggling to find her identity within her mixed lineage and culture, using poetry to express herself, the "whiteshaman" simply stole from her culture. As her poetry bespeaks the position of injustice, the "whiteshaman" spoke from a privileged position. Thus, as difficult as it is to summarize the works of Wendy Rose, her writings on "whiteshamanism" bring together different strands of themes that appear throughout her poetry.”

Once she had returned to her schooling, Rose did not leave the world of academia again and went on to teach Native American and Ethnic studies first at the University of California, Berkeley from 1979 to 1983, then California State University, Fresno from 1983 to 1984 and finally at her current position in Fresno City College in 1984 where she is the Coordinator of the American Indian Studies Program and edited the American Indian Quarterly. Rose is a member of the American Federation of Teachers and has served as a facilitator for the Association of Non-Federally Recognized California Tribes. In addition, she also serves on the Modern Languages Association Commission on Languages and Literatures of America, Smithsonian Native Writers’ Series, Women's Literature Project of Oxford University Press, and Coordination Council of Literary Magazines.

From 1966 to 1980, she began a new scholastic endeavor where she was enrolled in multiple colleges. First she attended Cabrillo College and Contra Costa Junior College. Then in 1974, Rose enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley. While attending the university in 1976 she married Arthur Murata and earned her B.A. in anthropology in that same year. Two years later she got her M.A. in 1978 and enrolled in the doctoral program. During this period of her life, Rose published five volumes of poetry and completed her Ph.D. in anthropology.

Wendy Rose (born May 8, 1948) is a Hopi/Miwok writer. Having grown up in an environment which placed little emphasis on both her Native American and white background, much of her verse deals with her search for her personal identity. She is also an anthropologist, artist, and social scientist.

Wendy Rose was born Bronwen Elizabeth Edwards on May 7, 1948, in Oakland, California. Though she is of Hopi and Miwok ancestry, Rose was raised in a predominantly white community in San Francisco. Growing up in an urban environment far removed from reservation life and Native American relations gave her little to no access to her native roots as a child. A theme at the forefront of her poetry, she comes from a mixed-blood family. Though her father is a full-blood Hopi, Rose was denied membership in her father's tribe because ancestry is determined matrilineally. Her mother was partly Miwok, but refused to acknowledge her American Indian heritage (instead she acknowledged her European ancestry including English, Scottish, Irish, and German extraction).