Alex Jacobs/Karoniaktahke
Alex Jacobs (Karoniaktahke) is an Akwesasne Mohawk visual artist, poet, spoken word performer, and journalist whose work has been featured across North America and internationally. His poetry has been presented at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and the American Indian Community House in New York City, as well as at Amerika Haus in Frankfurt and the Linden Museum in Stuttgart, Germany. He has also performed at major cultural events including the Santa Fe Indian Market, the Taos Poetry Circus, and the Talking Stick Festival in Vancouver. Jacobs has been an active member of the Poetry Aloud and Poetry Slam communities in Santa Fe and Albuquerque.
Throughout his career, Jacobs has received numerous honors for his artistic and literary contributions. He was awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellowship in 1996 and received the LOFT Poetry Multicultural Award in 2013 for his collaboration with poet Janet Marie Rogers. As a visual artist, he earned Best of Class, Category, and Division honors in 2D painting and graphics at the 2006 Santa Fe Indian Market.
Jacobs' creative work spans poetry, visual art, spoken word, and music. His son, DJ Duran Flint, produced a series of spoken word recordings in 2006 and 2007. His spoken word collaboration with Janet Marie Rogers, Got Your Back, was released in 2012, while Indian Rezervation Blues was released through Dixie Frog Music in France in 2009.
His published works include Native Colours (1974) and Landscape (1984), and his writing has appeared in numerous influential anthologies, including In the Darkness, Come to Power, The Next World, The Remembered Earth, The Clouds Threw This Light, New Voices from the Longhouse, Returning the Gift, Sovereign Bones, When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Living Nations, Living Words, Power of the Storm, and World Literature Today.
In addition to his creative work, Jacobs has played a significant role in Indigenous media and journalism. He is a founding member of Akwesasne Notes, Akwekon Journal, Indian Time newspaper, Mohawk Nation Radio, and the Native American Journalists Association. He has also worked as a freelance writer for Indian Country Today.
American Indigenous Democracy: A Call for Interdependence
American Indigenous Democracy: A Call for Interdependence serves as a welcoming volume for a much needed conversation about the origins of our founding documents and more importantly, about the wisdom of Native American ways of living and how they can be applied as an alternative to our present political dilemmas. Through eighteen eloquent essays, we hear contemporary Haudenosaunee leaders and scholars speak about life in present-day reservations, and most importantly, about the Great Law of Peace, the unifying code of governance that united these once warring tribes into one of the most formidable, and truly democratic league of nations that the continent had ever witnessed. American Indigenous Democracy: A Call for Interdependence invites us to look back and outside of our cultural, social, and political box in order to move ourselves and our country towards a more just and peaceful place.