Charles Trimble

Charles “Chuck” Trimble (1935–2020) was an American Indian author, journalist, and advocate, and a national leader in Indian affairs. He wrote the Foreword to four World Wisdom books: Spirit of the Indian Warrior (June 2019), an illustrated book of quotations; Black Elk, Lakota Visionary: The Oglala Holy Man and Sioux Tradition (April 2018); an abridged and illustrated edition of Frances Densmore’s Teton Sioux Music, retitled World of the Teton Sioux Indians: Their Music, Life, and Culture (September 2016); and an illustrated edition of Charles Eastman’s Indian Boyhood: The True Story of a Sioux Upbringing (June 2016).

Mr. Trimble’s writing is much respected for his ability to engage his readers with lively prose. Here is an example taken from his Foreword to Indian Boyhood:

In [Eastman’s] earliest years, his world was transformed by the growing presence of immigrant peoples in Sioux Country, and by the inevitable conflict between the Native and the European cultures. In the so-called Indian Uprising of 1862, the Dakota people rebelled against white incursions onto their lands and the government’s withholding of treaty-guaranteed rations that left them starving. Ohiyesa’s extended family fled to Canada to escape the U.S. Army, which was hell-bent on brutal vengeance, and there in the isolation of northern wilderness he spent his youth, coming of age immersed in traditional Dakota lifeways.

This story is told in Eastman’s first book, Indian Boyhood. Published in 1902, the book remains a classic in literature about Native America and a treasure for the preservation of a traditional culture that Indian people today strive to emulate and to restore in the modern world.

Mr. Trimble also wrote the book Iveska (Dog Ear Publishing, 2012), a collection of his own memories of his childhood and life, as well as reflections on matters of interest to those who follow American Indian affairs.

Charles Trimble was born and raised on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. He is an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe.

Mr. Trimble received his elementary and high school education at the Holy Rosary Mission Indian School in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, and later, in 1957, he earned his B.F.A. degree from the University of South Dakota. He later went on to become a national leader in Indian affairs, advocating for public policies to strengthen tribal self-determination and improve quality of life across Indian Country. In 1969, he was principal founder of the American Indian Press Association, and served as the organization’s Executive Director until 1972, when he was elected Executive Director of the National Congress of American Indians. In 1975, he represented U.S. Indian tribes at the charter meeting of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples in Copenhagen, Denmark. He also served as a U.S. delegate at the U. N. Sub-commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities in Geneva, Switzerland in 1983.

Charles was inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame in 2013 and was an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe.