Wooden Bridge at Punakha Monastery, Bhutan

Duane BigEagle is of American Indian descent from the Osage Nation of Oklahoma. He was born at the Claremore Indian Hospital in Claremore, Oklahoma, in 1946. He has a B.A.Degree from the University of California at Berkeley has been painting, writing, and publishing poetry since the early 1970s. Images are story for him, and he has mostly been known as a poet. He has also taught creative writing to young people with the California Poets In The Schools Program since 1976 and is a past President of the Board of Directors of that organization. He was awarded three California Arts Council Artist in Residence grants in the late 1980s and has received several awards for his poetry, including the W.A. Gerbode Poetry Award in 1993. He has been a college teacher since 1989 and a lecturer in Native American Studies at San Francisco State University, Sonoma State University, and presently at the College of Marin. He is a founding Board Member of the Northern California Osage and the American Indian Public Charter School in Oakland, CA. He is also a traditional American Indian singer and an Osage Southern Straight dancer. He is inspired by his Native American cultural traditions, his world travels, by the Ukiyo-i Japanese woodblock print artist Hiroshige in painting, and by the poet Cesar Vallejo in poetry.