Author, code talker expert to visit Jan. 30

Office of Communications & Marketing |Northeastern State University
TAHLEQUAH, Okla. -- Dr. William C. Meadows, author of The Comanche Code Talkers of World War II will be visiting Northeastern State University on Jan. 30 at 6:30 p.m. in the Webb Tower Auditorium for a special presentation and book signing. Immediately following the presentation, guests will be able to view the "Native Words, Native Warriors" temporary exhibit from the Smithsonian Institution currently on display at NSUs John Vaughan Library.

Meadows is an expert on the topic of code talkers and is the author of two books, as well as having work published in numerous academic journals on that very same subject. In 2004, he testified before Congress regarding Native American code talkers and later spoke at the Library of Congress in 2005.

The Comanche Code Talkers of World War II draws on interviews with all surviving members of the Comanche code talkers, their original training officer, and fellow soldiers, as well as military records and news accounts. Meadows' book tells the full story of the Comanche code talkers for the first time. He follows the group from their recruitment and training to their active duty in World War II and on through their postwar lives up to the present (2003).

He is a professor with a B.A. from Indiana University with a double major in anthropology and history, and M.A. and Ph. D. degrees in cultural anthropology from the University of Oklahoma. Meadows has performed fieldwork and published in subfields of cultural anthropology, linguistic anthropology and archeology. He has performed cultural and linguistic fieldwork with the Kiowa, Comanche, Naishan Apache, Cheyenee and Crow tribes, as well as in Japan, and has carried out archeological fieldwork in the Midwestern United States. Meadows currently works in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Missouri State University.

The authors presentation is sponsored by the NSU Sequoyah Institute and is held in conjunction with the Native Words, Native Warriors exhibit from the Smithsonian Institution. This event and all others associated with the exhibit are free and open to the public.

Native Words, Native Warriors, developed by the Smithsonians National Museum of the American Indian and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, will be on view Jan. 25 April 7, 2014. It is devoted to World War I and II Native American code talkers and veterans from over a dozen different tribes; the exhibit is located on the second floor of the John Vaughan Library at the NSU- Tahlequah campus. The national tour was made possible by the generous support from Elizabeth Hunter Solomon, the Smithsonian Womens Committee, and the AMB Foundation.