A member of the house of Geel, Michael Blackstock of Kamloops is a forester and mediator whose first book, Faces in the Forest (2001), examines tree art in conjunction with First Nations cosmology, citing carvings, paintings and writings on trees within Gitxsan, Nisga'a, Tlingit, Carrier and Dene traditional territories. Of Gitxsan (Hazelton) and Euro-Canadian descent, Blackstock also self-published Salmon Run: A Florilegium of Aboriginal Ecological Poetry (Kamloops: Wyget Books, 2005), a social commentary about ecology and the modern world that incorporates the perspective of trickster Wyget the Raven. Blackstock has a Master of Art degree in First Nations Studies and he provides illustrations and photographs for his own writing. He has served as a member of the UNESCO-IHP Expert Advisory Group on Water and Cultural Diversity.

Blackstock's Oceaness is a book of social commentary that includes poems, essays and art works. It includes his new theory of Blue Ecology which was developed with Elders, by interweaving their perspective with that of Western Science. The themes of this book are: water; ecology; oral history; human rights; music; and humour.

Review of the author's work by BC Studies:
Faces in the Forest: First Nations Art Created on Living Trees
Theatre in British Columbia

BOOKS:

Blackstock, Michael. Faces in the Forest: First Nations Art Created on Living Trees (McGill-Queen's Univ. Press, 2001). ISBN: 0773522565

Blackstock, Michael. Salmon Run: A Florilegium of Aboriginal Ecological Poetry (Kamloops: Wyget Books, 2005). ISBN: 0-9736765-0-7

Blackstock, Michael. Oceaness (Kamloops: Wyget Books, 2010).

[BCBW 2010]