Niethammer, Carolyn J.

Arizona resident and writer on Native American topics.

From the description of Carolyn Niethammer collection, 1951-2002. (Scottsdale Public Library). WorldCat record id: 70664737

Carolyn Jane Niethammer was born in Elgion, Illinois on May 21, 1944. In 1952, her parents brought her to the Northern Arizona town of Prescott where she was raised. On weekends she traveled Arizona's backwoods with her family, exploring ghost towns, old ranches, forests, deserts, lakes, and rivers. She earned her journalism degree from the University of Arizona, worked for newspapers for several years, and then began freelancing.

For her first book, American Indian Cooking: Recipes from the Southwest (originally titled American Indian Food and Lore ), she traveled throughout Arizona and New Mexico interviewing Indian women, learning about the wild plants they gathered, and watching them cook. She usually traveled in an old car, prone to breakdowns, and found that even those Native American mechanics located in backwater little villages were quite adept at getting her on the road again.

Niethammer found the lives of the Indian women she talked to so fascinating that her next book, Daughters of the Earth, explored the complex lives of Native American women beyond the kitchen. For this book she was on the road again, in another old car, visiting Apache girls' puberty ceremonies, Hopi basket dances, and Pueblo corn dances. The next book brought her back to edible wild plants, this time in modern recipes for the old foods in Tumbleweed Gourmet .

For the next 10 years, Niethammer worked in public relations and marketing communications, editing newsletters and books and writing brochures and video scripts. She traveled to Africa with her husband, journalist and journalism professor Ford Burkhart, three times, living for a year in Nigeria, two years in Cario, and a year in Uganda. Upon her return to Tucson from her last African trip, she decided to write a biography of an important Western woman. That desire culminated in I'll Go and Do More: Annie Dodge Wauneka, Navajo Leader and Activist (University of Nebraska Press, 2001).

Niethammer started her research on Annie Wauneka in the summer of 1995 with a two-month stay on the Navajo Reservation. She continued her research through 2000 with another short visit to the Navajo Nation, off-reservation interviews, and other library research.

(Sources: Carolyn Niethammer website, http://cniethammer.com/bio.htm, accessed 2006 February 1 and email message from Carolyn Niethammer to Melanie Toledo, 2006 February 5)

From the guide to the Carolyn Niethammer Collection, 1951-2002, (Arizona State University Libraries Labriola Center)