Artists

Sarah Wheelock

Pronouns: She/Her
Tribal Affiliation: Meskwaki Nation (People of the Red Earth) and bear clan

Sarah Wheelock (Ponapikwa) is a writer born in Iowa, who makes her home in the Twin Cities. A member of the Meskwaki Nation (People of the Red Earth) and bear clan, Sarah works in the legal field and serves the people of Minnesota as a judge for the Court of Appeals.

Sarah’s professional experience involves significant writing in the legal realm, but she also enjoys creative writing.  Since she was a child, Sarah has written poems and short stories, and dreamed of writing the next great novel of our time.  Sarah believes that fiction writing and story-telling are inherently human activities that help us make sense of the world and environments we inhabit.  Sarah is a language learner of Meskwaki (Meshkwahkihaki), an Algonquian language spoken by her ancestors and relatives from The Settlement.  A self-identified bibliophile, Sarah enjoys superheroes, science fiction, memoirs, historical fiction, philosophy, and poetry, as well as books about gardening, brain tanning, crafting, and more, and she owns more books than she has shelf space to store or time to read.  In recent years, Sarah began submitting work to the University of Iowa’s Write Now Flash Writing Competitions, securing an online publication of her piece Kunsi’s Feather in 2020: https://www.foriowa.org/iowa-stories/iowa-story.php?namer=true&isid=86.  Sarah’s writing focuses on her lived experience as a bi-racial Indigenous woman navigating complex systems of identity, power, and family, and her relationality to all of Creation.  Sarah strives to be a good relative to all and an amazing mother to her cubs.