The larger issues of my music have to do with themes such as:

• peaceful conflict resolution and ethical economics (The Vine of the Soul)
• body, mind and spirit and how they function (Aphrodite’s Aphrodisiac)
• engaging creativity (The Rainbow Mother Weaves Hummingbird Dream Bundles)
• celebrating self, valuing others (Dance of the Self Emerging from Journey to Xochiquetzul)
• fairness, tolerance, diversities and similarities (Mask: An Oratorio for the Earth; Rise Up! The Enemy Is Us)

• my desire to set the record straight regarding Native American history in America
• my concerns about social and political injustice as regards Native people and the implications of this in our human evolution
• my musical inspiration and underlying beliefs as an artist
• and my definition of my art as transformative

My earliest memories of prejudice were in regard to Native Americans that I heard expressed in my neighborhood growing up in Minnesota. Being inquisitive, I found an opportunity to see for myself and made a trip to Franklin Street in Minneapolis. There I watched the powwows, drumming and dancing going on in the back yards of Native People living there.

During the Minnesota centennial, for which I dressed up in a colonial dress for an affair at the Presbyterian Church, the Indians were never mentioned. I wondered why. I later learned that this anniversary of statehood was also the anniversary of the now famous quote made by the man who ran the trading post were the Indians came to collect their food. The food was their payment for vast acres of land given to the white settlers.

Refusing the Indians what was legally theirs, he said, "let them eat dirt." This is the part of Minnesota history that was omitted from by fourth grade class at Sheridan Elementary School were we made our crayon colored books of Indians in canoes, Indians in wild rice fields, Indians picking Lady Slippers.

And so in my pieces that are on Native American themes there is a desire on my part to set the record straight and tell some of what I was not told.

I feel that:

• the illegal seizure of Native lands in violation of US treaties and laws,
• the stated policy of genocide of the US government toward Indians, a policy enacted through spreading disease in infected blankets, poisoning (in California), massacre (at Bear Creek, Wind River, Wounded Knee) and starvation (the deliberate extinction of the Buffalo herds was suggested by General Sherman in order to starve the Plains Indians to death and decreed by President Jackson)
• the violation of their religious rites (traditional religious dances were banned by the US government until recently, in a country that prides itself on religious freedom.)
• the destruction of their families (through the policy of putting Indian children in boarding schools) and
• the destruction of their Native languages (children in reservation schools were not allowed to speak their language) are all a source of national shame.

It is my intention that through the performance of pieces such as Vision I, Vision II and the Kachina Piano Preludes, pieces dedicated to the celebration of the survival of the Native people of the Americas, that we as a culture and a nation become more aware of our true shared history. It is the intention of the music to bring Indian and non-Indian people together in the concert hall and beyond to create healing.

The purpose of much of my work (Bright Leaf Trios, Heart Like a Wild River, The Kachina Piano Preludes), is to foster the development of musical images that have the power to transform the human perception of nature and the human interaction with nature. This view of nature serves as a metaphor to express personal experience which is universalized through the musical art.

The transformation of consciousness I am seeking, one of balance and Earth stewardship, is already apparent in the philosophy and spirituality of Native people. Although each tribe has complex and unique traditions, they hold in common recognition of the Earth as a sentient being. This is something I feel in common with them. The idea that nature is "magic", alive, that it is infused with spirit.

The idea that the Earth and all living beings deserve respect and proper treatment is an idea Americans are slowly evolving toward. Yet the need to adopt this idea is urgent. When art supports such an idea the feelings are amplified and support can grow As the pieces are performed and discussed consciousness can grow. My vision is of concerts that are preceded and/or followed by workshops and discussions in which children and adults rehash these historical facts and come up with different solutions.

Let’s look at how this conflict between the Indians and the settlers was handled and lets come up with evolved ways to handle similar conflict in the future. Let’s progress as human beings and say... "atrocities like the Trail of Tears..

...atrocities like this will never happen again".