‘I weave a West that’s honest’

Author J Hoolihan Clayton (adoptee) is First Nations Plains Cree. Having lived a diverse and authentic life in the American West, she now writes history as fiction in order to inspire and elucidate.

 

excerpt...

Alamosa Citizen: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Who you are, where you come from, where you’re going, all of that good stuff.

J Hoolihan Clayton: Okay, well I’m Plains Cree. I was taken as an infant from the reserve in Canada in the Sixties Scoop and illegally adopted out across the medicine line into the United States.

I was adopted by a white family with a ranch in Wyoming. I was raised on a ranch in Wyoming, basically in the middle of nowhere, no running water, no electricity. I spent a lot of time, from a young age around Native elders and old cowboys and basically it was there that I think I became a writer.

I was so fascinated with the stories. I seem to have sort of an idyllic memory. I retained stories and then as I grew older, I began to write stories for myself. Despite all the other things that I’ve done in my life, I’ve always been a writer. I learned cowboying growing up and wasn’t able to have a college education early on. I worked as a ranch hand and wound up fighting wildland fires for years until I sustained enough injuries that vocational rehabilitation sent me to the University of Montana and I was able to get a degree in education and history.

History has always been a passion for me.

So, from there, since I needed an indoor job, I started teaching and mostly focused on Native American education and history. And mostly taught Native students or Hispanic students. I also specialize in at-risk education programs. I ran the education in the juvenile detention center in Taos for five years.

I set up several alternative education programs. One in a treatment center on the Taos Pueblo. One on the Zuni Pueblo. I taught at Dulce on the Jicarilla Apache Reservation and in rural Hispanic areas mostly. Then I decided that, for a variety of reasons, administration, fighting cell phones, I decided to retire and write full time.

There’s a wonderful quote from E.L. Doctorow that the historian will tell you what happened, the novelist will tell you what it felt like. That’s my impetus in writing these books. I also, because of my troubled past, with having been stolen, and also spending many, many years living in and cowboying on reservations in Pueblos and working on Pueblos, I wanted to tell the stories that I was learning about Native groups that are told from a perspective that you don’t find. 

KEEP READING:  https://www.alamosacitizen.com/i-weave-a-west-thats-honest/

A member of Western Writers of America, J. Hoolihan has been published in western historical magazines, such as "True West" and "Wild West." During her extensive research, J. Hoolihan continues to accumulate an abundance of topics for a succession of factual stories pertaining to the 19th century American West. Her first novel, Commendable Discretion, was published in January 2021. With Great Discretion is the second book of this series.* "Throwing the hoolihan" is a technique that old time cowboys used for roping horses. "Hoolihan" has been Juliana's nickname for decades