Children of the Turtle

From Aztec to Zuni, here are portraits of the daily lives of the First Nations people who lived and still live on the continent of North America; the great floating island the Northeastern woodland tribes called Turtle Island. Songs, chants and legends from the tip of southern Mexico to Alaska and Arctic Canada are included. Covering a time span of a thousand years, the book includes tribes now decimated or who are a nearly forgotten and rarely mentioned part of history.

This book of word-sketches paints a picture of their world: at times harsh and cruel, at other times spiritual and filled with beauty. These word-sketches convey the humanness of the original inhabitants of Turtle Island, the Native American Indians; paints them as neither noble nor savage, but simply as people who learned to live with nature's challenges and hardships and to endure.

To read these portraits of tribes and individuals, their land and customs, their needs, both physical and spiritual, is to understand the magnificent heritage that is the gift to the world from Native American Indian people.

Jacques L. Condor, a resident of more than fifty years in Alaska and the northwest Pacific Coast has lived and taught the art, history and culture of his Native American Algonkin heritage around the Pacific Rim. Condor has had a varied career as college professor, art director, gallery owner, TV and stage actor and director, film actor and a children's art and drama teacher. He taught for the Federal Government's Native American Indian Education program for the past ten years in the state of California, before retiring in 1999. He has been the recipient of five State Arts Grants to develop Native American Theater in Alaska and three in California. Condor, who is 73, lives with his wife, Diana Seno, in the foothills of the San Bernardino mountains. He devotes his time to writing, painting, and his grandchildren.