Larry Spotted Crow Mann is an award-winning writer, poet, cultural educator, Traditional Storyteller, tribal drummer/dancer, and motivational speaker involving youth sobriety and cultural and environmental awareness. He has served his Tribal community for over thirty years and is a founder and Co-director of the Ohketeau Cultural Center. www.ohketeau.org He is an enrolled citizen of the Hassanamisco Nipmuc Tribe of Massachusetts.His writings include Coming Home: Preventing Alcohol and Drug Use Among Native American Teens, A Circle Tied to Mother Earth: Native Life Skills for Middle School Children, and Stories and Poems for Northeastern Native Tribal Families. (All booklets are available through the Massachusetts Health Promotion Clearinghouse.)His books include Tales from the Whispering Basket, The Mourning Road to Thanksgiving, and Drumming & Dreaming. He has served as a board member of the Nipmuk Cultural Preservation, an organization set up to promote the cultural, social, and spiritual needs of Nipmuc people as well as an educational resource of Native American studies. Mann also serves as a Review Committee Member, at the Native American Poets Project at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.Mann is also the first Native American to sing the opening honor song and land acknowledgment at the 2021 Boston Marathon Start Line, and the recipient of the 2021 Indigenous Peoples Award of the Berkshire County Branch of the NAACP.
