James Phillip Welch was born 18 Nov 1940 in Browning, Glacier, Montana to Rosella Marie O'Bryan and James Phillip Welch Sr. He was one of three children born to this union. His father was a rancher, welder and hospital administrator. He was part of the Blackfeet Nation. His mother was a stenographer and part of the Gros Ventre Nation. As a result, he attended school on the Blackfeet and Fort Belknap reservations.
James attended Washburn High School in Minneapolis, graduating in 1958. Following high school, he worked in various jobs...U.S. Forest Service Firefighter, laborer and an Upward Bound counselor. Eventually, James attended the University of Montana in Missoula, Montana, studying for his masters in Fine Arts. Poet Richard Hugo, his instructor, fostered his poetic writings by encouraging him to write about what he knew most about...his Native American ancestry.
In June of 1968, he married his wife, Dr. Lois Monk, who was a professor of English and Comparative Literature at UM. They spent their life together teaching and traveling the world.
"Kind of growing up around the reservations, I just kept my eyes open and my ears open, listened to a lot of stories. You might say my senses were really brought alive by that culture. I learned more about it than I knew I did. It was only after I began writing about it that I realize that I had learned. I knew quite a bit, in certain ways, about the Blackfeet and Gros Ventre ways of life." (James Welch)
NOVELS
NONFICTION
POETRY
James died on 4 Aug 2003 in Missoula, Missoula, Montana. His cause of death was a Heart Attack after a 10 month struggle with Lung Cancer.
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Categories: Saint Mary's Cemetery, Missoula, Montana | Novelists | Historians | Poets | Blackfeet | University of Montana | Montana, Notables | Notables