Professor of History Clyde Ellis's recently published essay "'More Real Than The Indians Themselves': The Early Years of the Indian Lore Movement in the United States" has been nominated for the Western Writers Association's Spur Award for the best nonfiction essay on the American West published in 2008.
The essay appeared in the autumn 2008 issue of Montana: The Magazine of Western History. The Spur Awards are given annually for distinguished writing about the American West in a variety of categories. Previous Spur winners include Tony Hillerman, Stephen Ambrose and Joseph Bruchac.
This is Ellis’s second nomination for a Spur Award. His 2003 book A Dancing People: Powwow Culture on the Southern Plains was a finalist for the 2004 prize for book-length contemporary non-fiction.