Michael Anthony Dorris was a prominent American novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

ist and scholar

Academia

Academia is the community of students and scholars engaged in higher education and research.-Etymology:The word comes from the akademeia in ancient Greece. Outside the city walls of Athens, the gymnasium was made famous by Plato as a center of learning...

. During his career he presented himself as Native American

Native Americans in the United States

Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...

 and this identity was a key part of his professional activities and his public reputation; but its factuality is in doubt. His most famous works include the memoir, The Broken Cord (1989) and the novel, A Yellow Raft in Blue Water

A Yellow Raft in Blue Water

A Yellow Raft in Blue Water is a novel written by Michael Dorris and published in 1987. It is written from the viewpoints of three people, Rayona, Christine, and Aunt Ida, exchanging viewpoints between different sections of the book.-Plot summary:...

(1987). He was married to author Louise Erdrich

Louise Erdrich

Karen Louise Erdrich, known as Louise Erdrich, is an author of novels, poetry, and children's books featuring Native American heritage. She is widely acclaimed as one of the most significant writers of the second wave of what critic Kenneth Lincoln has called the Native American Renaissance...

. He committed suicide

Suicide

Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

 in 1997. The Broken Cord, which won the 1989 National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction, helped provoke Congress to approve legislation to warn of the dangers of drinking alcohol during pregnancy.
Born in Louisville, Kentucky

Louisville, Kentucky

Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...

 (or possibly Dayton, Washington

Dayton, Washington

Dayton is a city in and the county seat of Columbia County, Washington, United States. The population was 2,526 at the 2010 census.-History:...

) to Jim and Mary Besy (Burkhardt) Dorris, Dorris claimed Modoc

Modoc

The Modoc are a Native American people who originally lived in the area which is now northeastern California and central Southern Oregon. They are currently divided between Oregon and Oklahoma. The latter are a federally recognized tribe, the Modoc Tribe of Oklahoma...

 Indian, Irish, and French

French people

The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...

 ancestry.