Description
In 2018, Mike Larsen began working on his third set of elders portraits for the Chickasaw Nation. He and his wife and photographer, Martha, traveled together to each elder’s home. There they were honored to hear stories about the amazing lives each had lived. As Mike sketched, Martha recorded what each elder told them knowing it would later be shared in this book.
Mike finished his last painting in 2019, and the series was unveiled in 2020 at the Chickasaw Cultural Center in Sulphur, Oklahoma.
Listening to Our Elders is a compilation of those twenty-four awe-inspiring portraits, accompanied by narrative and biographical information on the featured elders written by Mike Larsen and Michelle Cooke, a senior staff writer for Chickasaw Press. Each is a moving reminder that we should all be “listening to our elders.”