Adam Fortunate Eagle Nordwall Sculpture Titled Earth Mother
Leader of the 1969-1971 Alcatraz Occupation
With base 16” sculpture alone 12 1/2”
A very rare original marble sculpture.
Titled: Mother Earth
One sale record of a multiple over 12k..
Not many of his very rare pieces come to market.
Does need a little restoration.. the nose has a chip.
Condition: see pics..
Adam Fortunate Eagle Nordwall
July 18, 1929- May 11, 2026
If you felt the ground under your feet move a little today (May 11, 2026), if you sensed a profound shift in the invisible universe, if your heart beat into a void for a moment, it was because the legendary Adam Fortunate Eagle Nordwall shuffled off his mortal coil.
Adam Nordwall was a member of the Red Lake Band of Chippewas. He was one of 10 children born to Rose and Anton Nordwall. Anton died in 1934, leaving his mother no choice but to send him and 4 siblings off to boarding school. He attended Pipestone boarding school, then Haskell Institute in Lawrence, Kansas, where he met his future wife Cordelia Bobbie Graham.
Moving to the San Francisco Bay area in 1951, they raised 3 children: Nila, Asha, and Adam Robert. He started his own business called “First American Termite Company”.
He became more involved in the tribal communities that had re-located to the bay area, eventually becoming the Chairman of the United Bay Area Council for many years.
He won many awards and recognition for him activism which included providing learning opportunities for Native American prisoners in San Quentin and Vacaville.
Throughout his life, he helped shape modern Native American activism through his unwavering commitment to Indigenous rights and communities. He fought for his people even becoming a lead organizer of the Indian Occupation of Alcatraz.
Through storytelling, art, writing, and satire, he chose words over violence and used his voice for a powerful voice for change.
When he had an opportunity to go to Rome for a conference, he used that opportunity to ‘discover Italy’. The pope asked to meet him. Instead of kissing each other’s rings, they just shook hands.
Adam Nordwall: Papal encounter, 1973
Though he never went to college, Adam Nordwall taught Native American studies at Cal State Hayward. One day, a colleague asked him to attend the International Conference of World Futures in Rome.
The Italian media were waiting for Nordwall when he deplaned in full tribal regalia and made this pronouncement as cameras flashed: "'What right did Columbus have to discover America when it had already been inhabited for thousands of years? The same right I now have to come to Italy and proclaim the discovery of your country."
For a week, Nordwall became a celebrity in the Italian media. Then he was summoned to the Vatican for an audience with Pope Paul.
When led in to meet the pontiff, who lifted his ring-clad hand for the customary kiss, Nordwall was ready. He offered his ring right back to the pope.
"There's this gasp," Nordwall recalled. "But the pope broke the ice. He broke into a grin and clasped my hand."
The photo of Nordwall and the pope hand-in-hand hangs in two places of prominence in his home now. Nordwall's wife, Bobbie, still seems bemused by the exchange three decades later.
"I was surprised, but what was I supposed to do, run over there and grab his arm and tell him we have to go home?" Bobbie Nordwall said. "When he opens his mouth like that, it's best just to get out of his way."
What makes Fortunate Eagle run off at the mouth so?
It could be a difficult childhood, his quest from an early age to fit in and find his place in an often-hostile world.
Nordwall was born in 1929 in Red Lake, Minn. His mother, Rose, was Chippewa; his father, Anton, of Swedish descent. The family of eight lived on the north side, the Christian missionary side, of a 200,000-acre lake. He sometimes wonders now how his life might have turned out had he grown up on the south side, the pagan Indian side, of the lake.
When Adam was 5, his father died. The Swedish side of his family had long since disowned them. Against his mother's wishes, Adam and four other Nordwalls were shipped to a boarding school, Pipestone Indian Training School.
It was there that Nordwall first experienced a different kind of racism -- coming from pure-bred Indians. He didn't look "Indian enough" to the other kids.
"I'd look at those beautiful Sioux and Cheyenne boys with their beautiful long narrow noses and then look at my pug nose in the mirror," he recalled. "I became very self-conscious.
And all the other kids had these great names like Running Hawk or Charging Eagle. My name? Nordwall. Kids were mean, and my sensitive little hide couldn't take it."
Actually, he had a Chippewa name that he learned when he was 8: Amabese, meaning "Handsome."
"Now, there are some names that kids can proudly say out loud," Nordwall said. "But that's not one of them."
It would not be until he turned 42 that Nordwall would receive an Indian name he felt he could say aloud: Fortunate Eagle -- bestowed on him by a Crow Indian for whom he had done a favor.
"What do eagles do?" Nordwall asks. "They circle."
Standing in the husk of his roundhouse, Nordwall likes to talk about the circularity of life, how the past never really stays in the past, how it only changes form.
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