Books published by Natural World Publications

Living Behind the Façade is a revealing and captivating story about and by a gay man - George E. Somers - whose rich and talented life as an artist spanned most of the 20th Century. Born in the Philippines following the Spanish-American War to an American G.I. from Kansas and a beautiful Spanish girl living in Manila's Spanish military garrison, George realized early in life that he was "different" from other boys his age - and that being "gay" was never "a choice" but an orientation he inherited from birth. Long before the term "Gay Rights" was coined and minted in the American vernacular, and before the Gay Liberation Movement brought millions of gays and lesbians out of the closet into a still homophobic society, George's life mirrored a shadowy era in which virtually all homosexuals were coerced into lives "behind the façade" - an ersatz heterosexual identity. Yet, in the shadows of the façade, George was part of the first gay rights organization in the United States - Society for Individual Rights. George's frank narrative describes the gay world and culture he has always lived in, from its obscure closeted beginnings to its more liberated present, providing gay and straight readers alike with an important and transparent portrayal of life behind, and from without, the gay façade of American society. Living Behind the Façade is more than a myth breaker, it is a significant contribution to the diverse ethnography of American Culture and Humanities. George passed away at 101 in the San Francisco Bay Area. His book was edited and published posthumously by his nephew, Jaime Jackson .

Cheyenne Tipi Notes is about a detailed description by anthropologist and ethnographer James Mooney of Southern Cheyenne women tanning cow hides for a historic reproduction of a 19th century hide tipi, between April 28th and June 2nd, 1903, at the Darlington Indian Agency, Oklahoma Territory. What sets this historical record apart from others is that the tipi still exists, perfectly preserved but buried away and virtually forgotten in the underground artifact catacombs of the Chicago Field Museum 115 years later. An experienced tanner himself, author Jaime Jackson not only found Mooney’s extant notes at the Smithsonian Institution, and then transcribed them, but found his way to the Field Museum to examine the tipi himself. Putting the two together, Jackson has disentombed and interpreted what happened a century ago, bringing back to life an ancient craft that was central to Plains Indian culture. Cheyenne Tipi Notes is a companion monograph to Jackson’s related work, Buckskin Tanner, which provides a step by step account of Plains Indian tanning, including what Indian tanners did to prepare bisonhides for clothing and their tipis.

Buckskin Tanneris the author — Jaime Jackson! — who narrates thestory of his adventure into natural tanning, beginningin the early 1950s at Disneyland’s Indian Village,where, as a young boy, his father took him to meetelder Native Americans brought by Walt Disney toguide park technicians construct the village. This wasduring the year before the park officially opened. “Iremember a dialogue between my father and some ofthe Indians about native tanning and the hide tipisput together there. The women traditionally tannedthe hides and sewed them together into tipis. But thehides used here were commercially tanned. I wonderedhow they did the tanning during the bygone buffalodays. And that is how it all began for me.”