Biography

Marcie R. Rendon is an enrolled member of the White Earth Anishinabe Nation. She is a mother, grandmother, writer, and sometimes performance artist. She is a playwright, poet, and freelance writer. A former recipient of the Loft’s Inroads Writers of Color Award for Native Americans she studied poetry under Anishinabe author Jim Northrup. She was a l998/99 recipient of the St. Paul Company’s LIN (Leadership In Neighborhoods) Grant to "create a viable Native presence in the Twin Cities theater community". With the support of
this grant she was able to collaborate with other native artists to create the infamous FREE Frybread script. She received a 1996-’97 Jerome Fellowship from the Minneapolis Playwright Center. Her first children’s book, Pow Wow Summer was published by CarolRhoda Publications in 1996. Her second children's book, The Farmer’s Market/Families Working Together, was released in the spring of 2001. In addition to her creative writing, she is a freelance writer for newspapers, magazines and grants writer.

Artistic Statement

We are kept in their mindset as “vanished peoples.” Or as workers, not creators…And what does this erasing of individual identity do to us? Can you believe you exist if you look in a mirror and see no reflection? And what happens when one group controls the mirror market? As Native people, we have known that in order to survive we had to create, re-create, produce, re-produce… The effect of the denial of our existence is that many of us have become invisible…the systematic disruption of our families by the removal of our children was effective for silencing our voices…. however, not (everyone) can still that desire, that up-welling inside that says sing, write, draw, move, be… we can sing our hearts out, tell our stories, paint our visions…we are in a position to create a more human reality…in order to live we have to make our own mirrors….