Larry Cloud-Morgan: Finding Aids : MNHS.ORG


	Creator:	Cloud-Morgan, Larry, 1938-1999, creator.
	Title:	Larry Cloud-Morgan prison papers.
	Dates:	1984-1987.
	Language:	Materials in English.
	Abstract:	Papers of a Minnesota Native American peace and justice activist, artist and poet, and Roman Catholic/Anishinabe (Ojibwe) spiritual counselor and leader, who also used the name Whitefeather, documenting his incarceration (1984-1987) for participating in the Silo Pruning Hooks Plowshares disarmament action in Missouri on November 12, 1984.
	Quantity:	2.5 cubic feet (3 boxes and 1 oversize folder).
	Location:	See Detailed Description for shelf locations.

Larry Cloud-Morgan, an enrolled member of the White Earth Band of Chippewa (Ojibwe), was born Lawrence Jacob Morgan on February 1, 1938 in Cass Lake (Cass County), Minnesota on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation. His Ojibwe parents, Nora Rock Morgan and John Morgan, named him Lawrence Jacob Morgan, and he was baptized with this name in the Roman Catholic faith. His paternal family’s surname had been Cloud, but a doctor named Morgan had assisted in the difficult delivery of either John Morgan or his father, and the family honored the doctor by taking his name. At some point, Cloud-Morgan added “Cloud” to his legal surname. He also used the name Whitefeather, the English translation of Wabash-Ti-Mi-Gwan, his Ojibwa name, especially as an artist and writer.

Nora Morgan died shortly after Larry’s birth. He grew up in Minneapolis, where he lived with an adoptive family and attended parochial schools, and on the Leech Lake Reservation, where he spent summers with his Ojibwa-speaking grandparents and his father. He became fluent in the Ojibwa language and was strongly affected by the pietistic Catholicism of his father and the traditional Ojibwe spiritual beliefs and practices of his grandfather. These childhood experiences and influences led him as an adult to consider himself a resident of both the reservation and the Twin Cities Native American communities, to develop a deeply personal religious faith and spirituality that incorporated not only both Catholic and Ojibwe teachings but also those of other religious and spiritual traditions, and to express these influences in his art and writings.

While a college student at Marquette University (Milwaukee), Cloud-Morgan was encouraged to become a priest and was, for a time, a seminarian at St. John’s University (Collegeville, Minnesota). He ultimately rejected the priesthood, however, and chose, instead, to pursue his artistic interests. He moved to Chicago in the 1960s to study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He remained in Chicago for many years developing his artistic and literary talents; working as a luggage buyer for Marshall Field & Company and at the Native American Outpost, a mental health clinic; and becoming active in the Native American community and the anti-Vietnam War peace movement. He also lived in Mexico City for a time and became fluent in Spanish.

Cloud-Morgan returned to Minnesota in the early 1980s and settled in Minneapolis. He earned a living as a Native American artist, playwright, and writer/poet and devoted much of his time and energy to community involvement, social justice causes, spiritual mentoring, and peace and disarmament activism. He served as vice president of the Indian Neighborhood Club. He volunteered regularly at St. Joseph’s House Community, a Minneapolis shelter for battered women and children established in 1976 by Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and operated in the tradition of the Catholic Worker movement. He was a member of Minnesota Clergy and Laity Concerned (CALC), a peace and disarmament organization, and participated in and was arrested at Honeywell Project protests against the manufacture of munitions and munitions systems by Minneapolis-based Honeywell Inc.

Cloud-Morgan’s peace activism culminated in his participation in a Plowshares movement nuclear disarmament action. On November 12 (Armistice Day) four Roman Catholic peace activists calling themselves the Silo Pruning Hooks – Larry Cloud-Morgan, Oblate priest Carl Kabat, his brother Paul Kabat, a Minnesota Oblate priest, and Helen Dery Woodson, a Wisconsin peace and justice activist – broke into a Minuteman II nuclear missile site in western Missouri; used a compressor-driven jackhammer and sledgehammers to damage the silo cover; hung a banner proclaiming their peace witness; issued biblical and Native American indictments of the United States government for the "production, deployment, and willingness to use nuclear weapons of indiscriminate mass destruction" and "desecrating the sacred earth with nuclear weapons," and the institutional Christian Church for "complicity in preparation for mass murder;" and offered a Eucharist.

Following their arrest at the missile site, the Silo Pruning Hooks were declared a threat to the community, held by the authorities on preventive detention, and denied bond. In late November they were indicted on charges of trespass on a government installation, destruction of government property, intent to obstruct (sabotage) the national defense, and conspiracy to commit the preceding offenses. They were tried and found guilty in United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri, Western Division (February 1985). On March 27 they received the most severe sentences to that date of any Plowshares group (Cloud-Morgan–eight years, Paul Kabat–10 years, Carl Kabat and Woodson–18 years). In addition, they were each ordered to pay approximately $3000 in restitution and special assessments and were given varying lengths of probation. All but Woodson appealed their sentences to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. The convictions were upheld and the appeals denied on July 22, 1986.

Cloud-Morgan was incarcerated at Federal Prison Camp, Terre Haute, Indiana in April 1985. He was transferred there from Wyandotte County Jail, Kansas City, Kansas, where he and the other Silo Pruning Hooks had been confined since November 1984. He was released in March 1987 to return to Minnesota under the terms of a sentence reduction agreement that stipulated a three-year probation. On January 27, 1989 he was convicted of violating the terms of his probation (he had left Minnesota without permission to participate in peace actions at the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in Georgia) and was sentenced to prison for one year. For health reasons related to diabetes, he was sent to the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners at Rochester, Minnesota. He was released on November 13, 1989.

Following his release, Cloud-Morgan remained in Minnesota, dividing his time between Minneapolis and a cabin near Ball Club on the Leech Lake Reservation. He resumed his multi-faceted life as a Native American artist, dramatist, and poet; activist on behalf of peace, social justice, American Indian rights, and the environment; Roman Catholic/Anishinabe (Ojibwe) spiritual counselor, mentor, and leader; community organizer and advocate; tribal government reformer; Ojibwe storyteller, lecturer, and teacher; and Ojibwa linguist and translator.

Larry Cloud-Morgan died on June 8, 1999 at Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park, Minnesota of complications caused by diabetes. He was buried in Morgan Cemetery, Wilkinson Township, Cass County, Minnesota.


	Court and legal documents and related papers

	Prison documents and papers

	Inmate law library materials

	Religious and educational materials

	Drawings and sketches

	Writings

	Correspondence and other papers sent

	Correspondence and other papers received

	Photographs

LARRY CLOUD-MORGAN:

DETAILED DESCRIPTION