Name Michael Fitzgerald | Role Author | |
Books Frithjof Schuon: Messenger of the Perennial Philosophy Similar People Thomas Yellowtail, Judith Fitzgerald, Charles Eastman | ||
Michael Oren Fitzgerald (born 1949) is an author, editor and entrepreneur. He and his wife, Judith Fitzgerald, have an adult son and live in Bloomington, Indiana.
Contents
Author and editor
The first book Fitzgerald recorded and edited was Yellowtail: Crow Medicine Man and Sun Dance Chief. It is the story of the late Thomas Yellowtail, one of the most honored American Indian spiritual leaders of the last century. Choice Magazine wrote, “This book becomes the personal testament of a pivotal figure in recent Crow cultural history. The book describes in exquisite detail Yellowtail’s philosophy. Fitzgerald examines the place of the Sun Dance, and of the sacred, in the life and future of the Crow… It is a serious work of anthropology and history.” Fitzgerald first met Susie Yellowtail, who is now enshrined in the Montana Hall of Fame, when he was Joseph Epes Brown’s graduate teaching assistant at Indiana University, Bloomington, for “Religious Traditions of the North American Indians”. Fitzgerald spent the summer of 1971 living with Thomas and Susie Yellowtail on the Crow Indian Reservation in Wyola, Montana, where he participated in the tribal Sun Dance and was adopted into the Yellowtail family and the Crow tribe. Following Dr. Brown’s 1972 departure to Montana, Fitzgerald taught a course of the same name in the Indiana University (Bloomington) Continuing Studies Department for two years.
Fitzgerald married his wife, Judith, in 1972. The Yellowtails introduced the Fitzgeralds to many spiritual leaders of other American Indian tribes. Over the next forty years Judith and Michael Fitzgerald spent extended periods of time visiting reservations and attending sacred ceremonies throughout the American West, including the sacred rites of the Crow, Sioux, Cheyenne, Shoshone, Bannock, and Apache Tribes. Janine Pease, founding president of the Little Big Horn College, National Indian Educator of the Year and a McArthur Genius Award winner, had this to say about Fitzgerald's relationship with Indian people and cultures: “Michael Fitzgerald has heard the poignant narratives of the American Indian people, and has lived among the Crow people for extended periods of time since 1970. He has studied American Indian religious traditions on the earth, among the people, in ceremonies and family gatherings. We thank Fitzgerald for his deep-seated appreciation, honor, and respect for American Indian culture, its religion, language, and lifeways.” These contacts led to the creation of a number of books and two documentary films on the American Indians. Fitzgerald has also lectured widely on American Indian history and culture at various colleges and high schools.
All royalties from Fitzgerald’s books and films about American Indians are donated to different American Indian causes or used to perpetuate American Indian spiritual traditions. This includes the Smithsonian’s Museum of the American Indian, the American Indian College Fund, and the traditional ceremonies of the Crow, Lakota, Apache, and Shoshone. Fitzgerald is both a Director and the Secretary of the Trehero-Trosper Sun Dance Inc., a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the perpetuation of Shoshone traditional ceremonies and culture.
As a fierce advocate of preserving indigenous languages, Fitzgerald is a co-founder of the Crow Language Consortium, a subsidiary of the Language Conservancy, and is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Language Conservancy. The Fitzgerald family provides ongoing financial contributions that include underwriting Crow language textbooks and the establishment of a permanent endowment for the Language Conservancy with the Bloomington Community Foundation.
Fitzgerald has now authored or co-edited more than fifteen books on world religions, sacred art, culture, and philosophy that have received more than thirty awards, including the ForeWord Book of the Year Award and the Ben Franklin Award. His books have been published in six different languages, and at least ten of his books and two documentary films produced by him are used in university classes. A selected bibliography is listed below.
Entrepreneurial career
Michael Fitzgerald founded or co-founded more than a dozen successful businesses in Bloomington, Indiana. The largest is Sunrise Greetings/ InterArt Holding Corporation, which was a $72 million greeting card company when he sold it to Hallmark cards in 1998. The businesses Fitzgerald co-founded employed approximately 1,000 people from 1997 through 2000. Fitzgerald retired from day-to-day business activity in 2000 to focus on his writing.
Fitzgerald's other Bloomington, IN area businesses include The Bakehouse (now the Scholar’s Inn Bakehouse), Perennial Designs, Leather Ltd, Devonshire Equestrian Center (now Rocky River Farm), Russell Road Water Corporation and Deer Park Management.
Fitzgerald holds an Honor’s Degree in Religious Studies from Indiana University, with Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude distinctions, and a Doctor of Jurisprudence from Indiana University Maurer School of Law - Bloomington with Cum Laude distinction.