Highwater, Jamake

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Jamake Highwater (b. ca. 1930) was the director and choreographer for the San Francisco Contemporary Dancers from 1954 to 1967, and a rock music journalist and travel writer from the late 1960s through the mid-1970s. The year of Jamake Highwater's birth is unknown, but was probably between 1930 and 1933. (A more exact date is unavailable, as Highwater, who was adopted as a child, has evidently not had access himself to accurate information concerning the date or place of his birth.) When he was about five years old, he became the foster son of a Southern California couple, Marcia and Alexander Marks, who later adopted him.

Known as Jack Marks or Jay Marks, Highwater grew up in the San Fernando Valley, near Los Angeles. Although his childhood was in many ways a difficult time, there were several adults from those years whom he came to credit as lasting influences in his life. Among them was one of his grammar school teachers, Alta Black, who recognized and nurtured his writing talent; the others were Frederick and Virginia Dorr and Frances Grigsby, neighbors of the Markses, who shared their extensive library and record collection with him.

After graduating from high school in 1950, Highwater attended college in the Los Angeles area for several years. During this period, he became interested in modern dance and choreography; at the same time, he continued to work seriously at writing. He was encouraged in this latter pursuit by Anais Nin, whom he met in 1952 through his friend James Leo Herlihy, then an employee of a Hollywood bookstore. (A memorable letter from Nin to Highwater on "why one writes" is in Box 2, along with other correspondence from Nin.) In 1954, Highwater moved to San Francisco and found work teaching modern dance at a small neighborhood school. About six months later, he and several of his fellow instructors left to form their own dance company, the San Francisco Contemporary Dancers. By then calling himself J Marks, Highwater was the company's director and choreographer for the next twelve years. He also wrote occasional articles for dance magazines, and edited a Bay Area periodical for the performing arts, Contemporary, from 1960 to 1962.

Frustrated by a lack of widespread critical and popular acceptance for the Contemporary Dancers in San Francisco, Highwater moved to New York in 1967. There, as part of a joint project with Karlheinz Stockhausen, whom he had known in California, Highwater began rehearsing the newly-reorganized Contemporary Dancers in a music and dance program to premiere in Europe in 1968. Although this work never came to fruition, the Saturday Review published an article by Highwater about the collaboration in its September 30, 1967 issue. "Conversations With Stockhausen" was the first piece of writing for which Highwater was paid; he later came to view its success as pivotal in his leaving a career in dance to write professionally.

Through a friend, Highwater met an executive at Bantam Books who was receptive to Highwater's proposal to do a book on contemporary rock music. Rock and Other Four Letter Words, with photographs by Linda Eastman, was published in December 1968. Over the next several years, articles and music reviews by Highwater (still known at the time as J Marks) appeared in a variety of publications, including Ingenue, the Los Angeles Free Press, and the Chicago Tribune . His second book, Mick Jagger: The Singer, Not the Song a "non-fiction novel," appeared in 1973.

The 1969 takeover of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay by members of the American Indian Movement, and Highwater's visit in 1970 to a Pueblo Indian historic site caused him to begin to think seriously about issues pertaining to American Indians. Information he apparently received from an affidavit by his adoptive mother in 1974 led him to conclude that one or both of his biological parents had indeed had "Indian blood," as he had previously believed, and that his birth name had been Jamake Highwater. During the early 1970s, while Highwater worked as a travel writer for Eugene Fodor's Modern Guides and continued to write articles on a free-lance basis, his byline evolved from J Marks to J Marks-Highwater, Jamake Mamake Highwater, and finally to Jamake Highwater. Fodor's Indian America, published in 1975, was Highwater's first book under that name.

From the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, Highwater produced more than a dozen books and numerous articles dealing with different aspects of Native American art, dance, and mythology. Among his non-fiction books from this time period were Song From the Earth: American Indian Painting (1976), Ritual of the Wind: North American Indian Ceremonies, Music and Dances (1977), and The Primal Mind: Vision and Reality in Indian America (1981). His novels included Anpao: An American Indian Odyssey (1977), The Sun, He Dies: A Novel About the End of the Aztec World (1980), Eyes of Darkness (1983), and the first three volumes of his "Ghost Horse Cycle" quartet, Legend Days (1984), The Ceremony of Innocence (1985), and I Wear the Morning Star (1986).

During those years, Highwater lived in New York City in Soho, which was then evolving from a warehouse district to an artists' community. From 1975 to 1979, he was the classical music editor for the Soho Weekly News, a lecturer at New York University's School of Continuing Education from 1979 through 1985, and a frequent guest speaker at numerous conferences and workshops. He also hosted several series and programs for the Public Broadcasting System, including "Native Americans" in 1983, and "The Primal Mind," based on his book, in 1985.

In 1984, Highwater established the Native Land Foundation, a non-profit trust for the promotion of world folk art and its influence on the visual and performing arts, through the sponsorship of lectures, documentaries, art exhibitions, and related activities. The Native Land Research Center, a conference site and resource library, was created on property purchased by the Foundation near Hampton, Connecticut. Highwater and his friend, the horticulturist John Williamson, moved there from New York in 1985. Since 1980, Highwater had been receiving an increasing number of attacks from several Indian activists who questioned his claims to Indian ancestry. Among the more unusual accusations was one put forth by Hank Adams of Seattle, who alleged that Highwater was in fact the experimental filmmaker Gregory J. Markopoulos. Adams's charges culminated in a lawsuit filed against Highwater in Seattle in 1986, asserting that Highwater had falsified his Indian identity in order to obtain federal funding for his projects. The charges were dismissed, but controversy over Highwater's ethnic identity persisted. (Documentation of the attacks on Highwater is in Boxes 34 and 84.)

Disappointed by the failure of many Indian friends and associates to support him against the attacks of Adams and others, and feeling that in any case he had exhausted the topics of Indian art and culture, Highwater began to emphasize more general themes in his writings after 1985. His next non-fiction work was a collection of essays, mostly about artist friends and acquaintances, Shadow Show: An Autobiographical Insinuation, which was published in 1986. Myth and Sexuality, an overview of attitudes about sexuality in different times and places, appeared in 1990. It was dedicated to the memory of John Williamson, who had died at forty in 1988.

In 1992, the administrative staff of the Native Land Foundation, including Highwater, relocated to Los Angeles. His Kill Hole, the last of the "Ghost Horse Cycle" novels, was published in September 1992. Highwater died in 2001.

From the guide to the Jamake Highwater papers, 1954-2001, (The New York Public Library. Manuscripts and Archives Division.)

Archival Resources
Role Title Holding Repository
creatorOf Jamake Highwater papers, 1954-2001 New York Public Library. Manuscripts and Archives Division
Role Title Holding Repository
Relation Name
associatedWith Campbell, Joseph, 1904- person
associatedWith Dlugozewski, Lucia person
associatedWith Hawkins, Erick person
associatedWith Montagu, Ashley, 1905- person
associatedWith Morgan, Barbara Brooks, 1900-1992 person
associatedWith Moyers, Bill D person
associatedWith Native Land Foundation corporateBody
associatedWith Native Land Research Center corporateBody
associatedWith Nin, Anaïs, 1903-1977 person
associatedWith San Francisco Contemporary Dancers corporateBody
associatedWith Stockhausen, Karlheinz, 1928-2007 person
Place Name Admin Code Country
Subject
Choreography
Occupation
Authors
Activity

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