Jamake Highwater
| Jamake Highwater | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Jackie Marks 13 February 1931; 14 February 1942 Los Angeles, California |
| Died | June 1, 2001 (aged 70) Los Angeles, California |
| Cause of death | Heart attack |
| Nationality | United States |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Awards | Newbery Honor |
Jamake Highwater, born as Jackie Marks, was also known as Jay or J Marks (14 February 1931–June 3, 2001). He was an American writer and journalist of eastern European Jewish ancestry, who from the late 1960s claimed to be of Cherokee and Native American ancestry. In that period, he published extensively under the byline Jamake Highwater. One version of his shifting story was that he was adopted as a child and taken from his Indian home in Montana to grow up in Los Angeles, Southern California.
According to his accounts from the late 1960s on, he grew up in Los Angeles with adoptive parents. He later lived in San Francisco and New York City. He was the author of more than 30 fiction and non-fiction books of music, art, poetry and history. His children's novel Anpao: An American Indian Odyssey (1973) received a Newbery Honor. His book The Primal Mind: Vision and Reality in Indian America (1981) was the basis of a PBS film documentary, and he made other documentaries for PBS.
Highwater assumed a false American Indian identity as Cherokee about 1969, using the name "Jamake Highwater" for his writings after moving to New York. He never said that he was enrolled in the tribe but had "recovered" his Native identity. His fabrications were exposed in 1984 by activist Hank Adams (Assiniboine) and reporter Jack Anderson in separate publications. Highwater had already received more than $800,000 in grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting from 1982 to 1983, based on his claims to be Native American.
Despite this documentation, Highwater remained widely perceived as a Native American. He continued to be called on to speak and participate in cultural activities, although he received no more federal grants on Native American topics. His claims about his year and place of birth, and the circumstances of his adoption, were reported as part of his obituaries in 2001 in mainstream press such as the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. Indian Country Today in 2015 reported additional findings about his elaborate pose, including publishing a copy of his 1931 birth certificate from Los Angeles and a photograph of his father's military gravestone, marked with a Jewish star.
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