Jack Gladstone earns NAMA for Native Anthropology

Published: October 20, 2011

Blackfeet musician and storyteller Jack Gladstone won a Native American Music Award in the Best Historical Recording category for his latest album, Native Anthropology. Award winners were named Oct. 7, and feted that weekend during a celebration in Niagara Falls.

Gladstone was also nominated in the categories of Songwriter of the Year and Best Folk Recording. Along with official judging, voting was part of the selection of winners in the Grammy-like awards.

Gladstone told the Great Falls Tribune that the support of Montanans helped him win. "It's wonderful to have validation from your professional peers and the vote counter said I had a tremendous amount of votes," he said. "The fan support was a critical element to put my nomination over the top."

Subtitled “Challenge, Choice and Promise in the 21st Century,” Native Anthropology is an eclectic collection of original compositions. The album’s centerpiece is the epic composition “Remembering Private Charlo,” which honors the Montana Bitterroot Salish Marine whose patrol preceded both flag-raisings in the battle for Iwo Jima in 1945.

Chester’s Philip Aaberg led a production team that included fellow Montanans David Griffith and Michael Atherton. The Native American Music Awards and Association is the world's largest professional membership-based organization committed to honoring contemporary and traditional Native American music initiatives.

Gladstone gives a free concert, 7 p.m. Nov. 12 at the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center in Great Falls, and offers a teachers' workshop earlier that day titled "Jim Thorpe – American Sunlight and Shadow." Call 406-727-8733 about either event.

Another Montanan, Joseph FireCrow of the Northern Cheyenne won a NAMA for single of the year for his song, "Out of Many We Are One."