Spotlight Profile
May 2001
Pamela Owens
Internet Chapter Alt.Websister
and Steering Committee Member
Who is Pamela Owens, our member in the Spotlight for May?
She's a member of SinC-IC's steering committee, and alternate websister, but there's much more to know. A better introduction might be these lines from one of her favorite poets, Edna St. Vincent Millay.
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But, ah, my foes, and, oh, my friends --
It gives a lovely light.
"I'm like a cat with nine lives, but I'm living them all at once," Pamela says.
In her words: "I'm an activist and a feminist, a pacifist and a Christian. I love to eat strawberries, especially with chocolate. I love it when my husband brings me chocolate, or flowers, or strawberries. Before any of the above, I am a person, from the principal people, known to the world as the Cherokee."
She's also an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). She has a bachelor's degree in sociology from Vanderbilt University, a master's from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and a doctorate from the University of Chicago.
She's a fiction writer. She got the urge to write fiction, she says, while writing a 500-page dissertation on Hebrew poetry in the Old Testament's book of Lamentations to earn her doctorate. Her first mystery novel has been set aside while she completes her first year as an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, and begins Phase I of a four-year project entitled "The Politics of Cherokee Bible Translation."
When that project is completed, she will have a book manuscript surveying Bible translation across the five southeastern Indian tribes known as "civilized." First, of course, and in her spare time this month and next, she'll be learning the Cherokee language. Of course.
How confident she is! "I know how the language works linguistically, which is half the battle," Pamela says. "It works a lot like Hebrew (remember, some missionaries thought the Indians were the lost tribe of Israel). So, I have to send for some tapes and workbooks and get down to it seriously. I learned to read Biblical Hebrew in a month, so surely this can't be harder than that. Of course, I was a lot younger then, and I've never fully mastered the vocabulary, but that's another story."
Speaking of another story, wait until you hear about the thirteen nights she spent in jail ... oh, boy ... one life at a time, shall we?
IC
Pamela, are your husband and children as passionately involved in social issues as you are? Give us a rundown on them.Pamela
My husband, Rick, plans for his employment base in Omaha to be Democratic party or issue politics. Worked last fall in a successful Senate race. Now running an Omaha city council race for a radically independent incumbent.Our oldest child, Johanna, graduated from the University of Illinois Chicago as an art history major. Served with me on the National Committee of the War Resisters League while she was a student at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. Lives in Chicago with her partner, a political philosopher who writes think pieces for leftwing publications. We adore him, and his family feels the same way about Johanna.
Joe, our elder son, is named for Daniel Berrigan, and a radical priest we knew in Austin, Joseph Znotas. Joe plans to support the rest of us since none of us appears likely to make a decent living! Finishing his junior year in biomedical engineering at Vanderbilt, minoring in music. Aiming for a future in medical research.
Our son John is 14, shoe size 14 1/2! Skipped 8th grade when we moved to Omaha and went straight to Central High School, alma mater of Henry Fonda. Also, we're convinced, it's the future alma mater of John Owens-Ream, first President of the U.S. to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. John is a poet and novelist, an actor and debater, and a top notch multi-sport athlete. I'm not bragging. He's the smartest of the five of us, and we are convinced he fell from the stars. He's amazing, and sometimes scary.
So far, these are my major works in progress!
IC
This seems like a good time to ask about your arrest and incarceration. A war protest?Pamela
I pastored a small church in rural Michigan for three years, 1981-84. It was a union of my denomination and a nearby congregation from the Church of the Brethren, both peace churches. While there I was arrested for being part of a weeklong Advent blockade of Williams International Manufacturing, which made engines for the Cruise missiles (nuclear tipped) that were being placed in Europe at that time. The international movement succeeded in blocking that arms build up and was possibly one of the most important things I will ever do.I was only in jail about 13 days of the 30-day sentence we received for breaking an injunction against blockading. We were also charged with a variety of misdemeanors, and conspiracy. That was the charge they tacked on after the first day, to try to deter the blockade in subsequent days, but as always with such tactics, it only strengthened it.
School children and women's groups and pastors and all kinds of people I'd never met wrote me, saying how my action strengthened their resolve to oppose the arms build-up and how they were writing their congressman, or the president, or signing a petition, or going to a demonstration, as their small part.
So many people had seen me on the news footage of when I was being dragged off. Right at that moment a reporter stuck a microphone in my face and said, "Why are you doing this?" My answer -- "Because I don't want to see my two young children die in a nuclear war!" -- was the perfect sound bite for days. Someday, I will put all this in a murder mystery!
IC
After an experience like that, what do you do for an encore?Pamela
We moved to Chicago for graduate school. They say a doctorate at the University of Chicago is a terminal degree, because you may die before you finish. I have ten languages, counting English, half of them dead ones. My specialty is Old Testament (Hebrew Bible), but at Chicago you have to be prepared to teach anything in the field of religion to get a Ph.D, or at least you did "in my day."I got the degree in 1997, after five years on the dissertation. The title is "Suffering from 'Aleph to Taw: The Imagery of Suffering in the Book of Lamentations." It can be read through the University of Michigan microfilm archives, I understand, or at least an abstract. It actually is pretty fascinating to people who are interested in either Bible, poetry, or linguistics, as it has an element of all three.
It's a detailed study of the Hebrew poetry of the Biblical book of Lamentations, which was written in the 6th century, BCE, sometime between the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians and the conquest of Babylon by the Persians. I don't think there is any murder mystery material there, but it is related to my getting into this genre, as a writer.
IC
How so?Pamela
I was utterly stalled on the dissertation at a certain point, and decided to take a break and read a Margaret Truman mystery. I'd found it on a used books sale table when I cut through the University Christian Church to avoid a downpour one spring day in 1995. Then I picked up a Sue Grafton from the floor of a friend's car when she gave me a ride, and she said, "Keep it." I couldn't stop reading and began reading mysteries every night before I went to bed. I concentrated on women authors, but soon discovered Tony Hillerman and Native American themes.Anyway, while I was reading real prose, as opposed to the academic-ese I had been reading for so long, the words started flowing on the dissertation and it was finished -- well, not quite that fast, but at least it did get done and I have the degree. By the time I finished the dissertation I had read hundreds of mysteries, and I suddenly began to think I could write one.
I had written a LOT of poetry in my youth, and had tried to write a novel several times as a teenager, but never got very far. I'd always been an outstanding expository writer and a decent journalist. I had done some investigative journalism in the early 70's (in North Carolina's civil rights movement days) for a paper called The Southern Patriot. It was published by the Southern Conference Education Fund, which was a major early civil rights group in the southeast back then.
I never start anything half-heartedly, so I did my research, joined Sisters in Crime, bought books on writing, and poured a summer into it. Took some online courses at noveladvice.com, and they were great, especially those taught by Shirley Kennett. I have what folks think is a great plot and characters, but can't seem to get the whole thing together, and haven't had another whole summer to devote to it.
IC
Before we talk about your book-in-progress, tell us something about your Cherokee heritage.Pamela
I am Cherokee -- always was, even when no one noticed, asked or cared. I'm not just a New Age Indian, as people often think when they see my fair skin. I'm a mixed-blood Cherokee with a Scots-Irish side to my ancestry. And contrary to common thought, it's the blonde genes that are dominant over Native coloring, not vice versa. We keep the cheekbones, the eyes and especially the eyebrows, and usually the grayer we get the more "Indian" we look.My maternal grandmother's mother was born in Indian Territory before Oklahoma statehood; my grandmother was born about the time of statehood. They come from people who were removed by Andrew Jackson on the Trail of Tears. We don't know all the genealogy, so I can't say for sure if they started in Tennessee, Georgia, or North Carolina. Of course, those distinctions were not part of our history, so they didn't really matter to us!
IC
Do you draw from that background in the mystery novel you're writing?Pamela
Yes. I planned it as a contribution to the newly-developing genre of mysteries with a Native American protagonist. My story is set in Chicago, and features Jo Clayfield, an urban, mixed-blood professor of comparative literature.IC
In the past, you've been active in the SinC-IC Workshop, doing critiques and posting some of your own book, with a working title of The Chicago PowWow Murder. Can you tell us a little of the story?Pamela
When the manager of a visiting American Indian rock band is murdered during a benefit PowWow at Chicago's Native American Cultural Center, neither Jo nor her friend, a Chicago police detective, suspect a connection with birth defects observed forty years earlier among Native Americans of Washington State.A gentle Navajo elder is charged with the murder. Jo knows she must locate the missing pieces of the picture. With the help of a curious television news anchor the murdered man tried to contact, Jo finds that the seemingly motiveless murder actually leads to a high-level cover-up linking a retired University of Chicago pediatrician with a world-famous nuclear scientist.
To Jo, the murder represents one more example of the centuries of disregard for Indian lives. The difference is that this time the disregard threatens her own life, the lives of her children, and even of their friends.
IC
Besides lack of time, what problems do you encounter as a first-time mystery novelist?Pamela
One of my problems is making bad things happen to the characters I like, not counting the one I created to be the murder victim. I'm working on it! I don't have a complete draft, although I have some complete chapters that I think are fairly fine-tuned. I know "whodunnit," but I haven't quite figured out how my sleuth gets there, and how to make it suspenseful enough. I don't know when I'll get back to it seriously, but I'm thinking of posting some chapters on my website.IC
Pamela, the UNO website introduces you as the newest tenure track faculty member of the Department of Philosophy and Religion. Your curriculum vitae is too extensive to include in Spotlight, but here's a very brief look.
- Honors: Phi Beta Kappa, bachelor's degree in three years, Magna Cum Laude, Vanderbilt University; American Association of University Women Dissertation Fellowship, Disciples Divinity House Scholar and Henry Barton Robison Scholar, University of Chicago.
- University of Chicago Qualifying Exams: Israelite History and Religion (including Archaeology of Syria-Palestine); Hebrew Scriptures and Related Documents; New Testament Literature and Related Documents; Selected Theologians (Part 1, John Calvin; Part 2, Jurgen Moltmann); Topics in Practical Theology (Part 1, Homiletics; Part 2, Contemporary Biblical Interpretation).
- College and Community Service: Founding Board Member, Central Texas Assn. for Gifted Children, Austin; Parent Coordinator and Board Member, Chicago Children's Choir; Coach (T-Ball to Little League), Hyde Park Kenwood Baseball; Advisor, Student Union for Native Americans, Mount Union College.
IC
How did you get from all of that to being a professor of Native American religion?Pamela
Well, that's a logical question. It turns out that in the world of academia, once one is a Native American Scholar of Religion, one tends to move almost imperceptibly into becoming also a Scholar of Native American Religions, or as we prefer to say, Native American religious traditions. All of that is to say that I am not in the first place a scholar of Native American religion, although I'm pretty well-versed in it, and surely know more than my students or the man/woman on the street. But first of all I'm a Native American scholar of the Bible, whatever that may mean. Actually, I'm still figuring out daily what that means!
This summer, it means I'm doing research on translations of the Bible which were made into Cherokee in the 1800's, a cooperative enterprise between the missionaries to the Cherokee and their Native interpreters. For that, I will be drawing on my language skills to learn a whole lot more Cherokee than I grew up with! But learning languages is one of the things I do.
IC
Your grant proposal points out the significance of your new research project. Quoting:"Bible translation throughout history often has become political. Certainly that was true in the Cherokee Nation from 1830-1870. Both the Treaty Party, which supported voluntary removal to Indian Territory, and the Patriots, who resisted removal until pulled from their homes, initiated Bible translation projects. Each translation was a joint effort of white missionaries and Cherokee interpreters. Each party was supported by a major missionary group and each found Biblical passages to support its positions.
Beyond the political issues of translation, all Cherokee translators faced the dilemma of expressing concepts which had no parallel in the Cherokee language and world view. 'There were simply no Cherokee words for most of the basic Christian theological terms. The Cherokees had no word for sin, grace, repentance, baptism, depravity, forgiveness, heaven, hell, soul, damnation, regeneration, or salvation. [Native speaking] interpreters were stumped into silence when expected to translate sermons to congregations.' [quoting from William G. McLoughlin, Champions of the Cherokees, p.35]."
What's the status of your request for funding, and what is your schedule like for this summer?
Pamela
I got my funding from the University Committee on Research here at UNOmaha, so I am all set there. I do hope to get back to my mystery this summer, and I hope to get back into the SinC-IC Workshop, too. But first, I teach summer school, Introduction to Native American Studies, in the first day session, June 4-July 6.Between the time I finish up this spring semester and get grades in, which should be in the next few days, and the start of summer school in June, I'll be doing a lot of internet searching of libraries, and contacting librarians to line up what I'll see when I'm in Texas and Oklahoma.
My parents live in Dallas and my cousin in Oklahoma City, so I will be visiting relatives too. I try to spend at least a couple of weeks with my parents every summer. They are in their late seventies and my dad has not had such good health the past few years, so I want as much time with him as I possibly can get while we can all enjoy it.
I will probably go on to Dallas soon after summer school ends, although I may actually start in Oklahoma. I have a colleague in the history department here who will be working on his own project in the Ft. Worth (Texas) Federal archives, so we will try to coordinate that part to keep each other company. He's writing on black slavery and post-slavery workers on the Mississippi steamboats. Sounds fascinating to me! Much of what I will be doing in the remote libraries is photocopying, and copying microfilms and such. Next year will be the time for analyzing what I find.
IC
A few months ago you moved into your dream house, an 1895 Victorian with ten rooms and a basement, patios, porches, a big garden and a goldfish pond. Sounds like a perfect place to work and to relax.Pamela
One of my childhood dreams was a two-story storybook house -- didn't know they were called Queen Anne Painted Ladies -- and now I have one! And a garden to die for (and in)!IC
We hope you'll find some time for relaxing in that garden this summer, Pamela. Thank you, and keep us posted on your progress!This interview was conducted during the month of April 2001 for SinC-IC
by Pat Browning.
Visit Pamela's Site at the university.
Or on her department's home page.
Or visit her "just for fun" page on yahoo with links to some of her other interests.
Or see pictures of her home on the Owens-Ream Family Site.
E-mail PamelaE-mail Pat
Read an earlier Spotlight Profile
