Miller, Lee

PERSONAL:

Ethnicity: "Of Eastern Cherokee and Kaw heritage." Education: Johns Hopkins University, M.A., 1987; attending law school.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Upstate NY.

CAREER:

Anthropologist, ethnohistorian, and writer. Pathways Productions, writer, head of research, 1991—; 500 Nations miniseries, Columbia Broadcasting System, writer, head of research; Library of Congress, Washington, DC, consultant for the Columbus Quincentenary exhibit; helped organize the American Indian collection at the Smithsonian Institution; works as a consultant for several Indian nations and both federal and state agencies. Also owns and operates a nursery, where she grows approximately thirty types of trees. Founder, Native Learning Foundation

WRITINGS:

(Editor and narrative) From the Heart: Voices of the American Indian, Knopf (New York, NY), 1995.

Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony, Arcade (New York, NY), 2001.

Godhuli: A Portrait of Mrs. Bina Mukherjee and Her Family, Xlibris (Tinicum, PA), 2005.

Roanoke: The Mystery of the Lost Colony (children's book), Scholastic (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor to Many Nations: A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Indian and Alaska Native Peoples.

SIDELIGHTS:

A writer, anthropologist, and ethnohistorian, Lee Miller is particularly interested in the lives of Native Americans, given her own background, which includes Eastern Cherokee and Kaw heritage. Miller earned her master's degree in anthropology with a particular emphasis on the cultural heritage of American Indians, graduating from Johns Hopkins University in 1987. She has worked on a variety of projects over the course of her career, helping organize the American Indian collection at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, consulting for the Library Congress for their Columbus Quincentenary exhibit, and also acting as a consultant for the government at both federal and state levels, as well as for several Indian nations. In 1990, actor Kevin Costner approached Miller after having seen her interviewed on a CD-ROM as part of an exhibit at the World Expo in Barcelona, Spain. As a result, Miller ended up working for Costner as a writer and head of research for his miniseries 500 Nations, which aired on the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). Miller also went on to write the companion book to the series.

Miller has written or edited several volumes that examine the lives of Native Americans and address the relationships between various Indian nations and the European settlers. She is perhaps best known for her work related to Roanoke, the infamous colony off the coast of North Carolina that supposedly vanished with no real explanation. Her interest in the mystery was initially sparked when she spent some time living on Roanoke Island researching a different project. She was struck by the sense of isolation on the island, particularly in the winter when there were fewer tourists, and that led to thoughts of those initial colonists, and what they must have endured. Curious, Miller began reading up on the subject and realized the research to date had primarily come from the British point of view, and that there had been no in-depth analysis performed by an expert on Native Americans, despite the fact that when the colonists left the island they would have immediately found themselves in Indian territory. In an interview for the Independent Online Booksellers Association Web site, Miller remarked: "My expertise is the Indian southeast, so I wanted to tackle the problem to see if I could understand it differently by looking at it from a new angle."

Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony is the result of Miller's research. She includes a brief explanation of the background, describing how the group of approximately 120 English citizens were commissioned by Sir Walter Raleigh to become the first British colony in the New World, settling on Roanoke Island where there was an abandoned English fort. By 1587 reports came back to England that every soul from that initial group had vanished into thin air. Although other expeditions were sent to search for the missing colonists, no definitive answer was ever found, in spite of various signs that they had some contact with the local Indians. Miller then builds a case for what she believes to have happened to the vanished colony, including political intrigue, her knowledge of Native American politics, and every bit of evidence she could glean from letters, memoirs, and the other sparse information surviving from the era, coming up with a theory of sabotage. Nicholas Harman, in a review for the Spectator Online, remarked that "her technique is to present her findings as a detective story, chopped up into bite-sized clues and very short sentences, lent a spurious urgency by leaving out the verb…. Sometimes, by no means always, she admits to claiming a deduction as a fact, a jumped-to conclusion as a certified truth." John Burch, writing for Live Journal, opined that "there simply isn't enough evidence to support definitively the conclusions that are presented here." Overall, however, he found it "an interesting, well-told tale."

Miller has also written a children's book based on the history of Roanoke, Roanoke: The Mystery of the Lost Colony. The book tells the same story, focusing primarily on the colonists and their precarious journey to the New World, and how their leader was forced to return to England for additional supplies. She discusses what life would have been like in such harsh, wild country, and also includes information about the Native Americans of the region. A contributor for Kirkus Reviews commented that "inclusion of an author's note would have been an opportunity to show how the author arrived at her conclusions," but overall, praised Miller's writing and her approach to the material.

From the Heart: Voices of the American Indian, for which Miller served as editor, gathers together a wide assortment of excerpts from Native speakers over a period of centuries. The collection gives readers a very different point of view regarding the European expansion into the New World, and how it affected the people who already lived there. Margaret Flanagan, reviewing for Booklist, called Miller's effort "a haunting and eloquent anthology."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 15, 1995, Margaret Flanagan, review of From the Heart: Voices of the American Indian, p. 1629; June 1, 2007, Carolyn Phelan, review of Roanoke: The Mystery of the Lost Colony, p. 66.

History Today, November, 2001, Anne Pointer, review of Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony, p. 57.

Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2007, review of Roanoke: The Mystery of the Lost Colony.

Library Journal, June 1, 2001, John Burch, review of Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony, p. 185.

ONLINE

Arcade Publishing Web site,http://www.arcadepub.com/ (March 20, 2008), author profile.

Independent Online Booksellers Association,http://www.ioba.org/ (March 20, 2008), Shirley Brant, author interview.

Johns Hopkins University Web site,http://jhu.edu/ (March 20, 2008), Dale Keiger, "Rethinking Roanoke."

Library of Congress Web site,http://www.loc.gov/ (September 25, 2001), "Author Lee Miller to Discuss Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony at the Library of Congress."

Scholastic Web site,http://content.scholastic.com/ (March 20, 2008), author profile.

Southern Scribe,http://www.southernscribe.com/ (March 20, 2008), Pam Kingsbury, review of Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony.

Spectator Online,http://www.spectator.co.uk/ (December 9, 2000), Nicholas Harman, "The Mystery of Our First, Lost American Colony."