SOURCE: Welch, James, and E. K. Caldwell. “James Welch: An Interview with a Seminal Author in Native Literature.” News from Indian Country 9, no. 1 (15 January 1995): 24.

In the following interview, Welch explains his role in the development of Native American writing and discusses the historical significance of the genre.

Contemporary Native literature. James Welch. The two are most times mentioned in the same breath, whether you are sitting in a university classroom or in an informal circle of Native writers.

Two and a half decades ago, when Native literature was a new idea to mainstream American publishers, Welch, a mixed blood Blackfeet/Gros Ventre, published a volume of poetry, Riding the Earthboy 40. Four years later, in 1974, he released his first novel, Winter in the Blood, which is now acknowledged as “an influential classic in the birth of contemporary Native writing.”

In the years since he has become one of the...