NEW YORK, NY.- Joanne Shenandoah, the most critically acclaimed and honored Native American musician of her generation, known for infusing ancestral melodies with the sound of contemporary instruments, died Nov. 22 at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona. She was 64.

Her husband, Douglas M. George-Kanentiio, said the cause was complications of liver failure.

Shenandoah reshaped American Indigenous music by taking ancient songs and blending them with her own accompaniment on flute, piano, cello and guitar.

She recorded 15 albums and numerous singles, and collaborated with many other musicians. She won a Grammy Award for Best Native American Music Album for two tracks on the 2005 album “Sacred Ground: A Tribute to Mother Earth”: “Seeking Light,” a solo track, and “Mother Earth,” which she performed with Rita Coolidge, also a Native American musician, and Coolidge’s trio, Walela.

Her albums “Peacemaker’s Journey” (2000) and “Covenant” (2003) were nominated for the Grammy for Best Native American Music Album, a category that has since been discontinued, to the frustration of many Native Americans.

Shenandoah, who was a member of the Wolf Clan of the Oneida Nation in central New York, also won 14 Native American Music Awards, the most ever awarded to a single artist.

“She sang with deep roots from her ancestors and flawlessly incorporated her oral traditions into contemporary folk, country and Americana formats,” the Native American Music Awards & Association said in a statement.

Earlier this year, Shenandoah released her last full-length recording, “Oh Shenandoah,” a collection of country-infused songs that included a dedication to missing and murdered Indigenous women called “Missing You.”

She dominated the Native American music scene for three decades, often singing with her daughter, Leah Shenandoah, and her sister Diane Shenandoah. Among her venues were Carnegie Hall, Madison Square Garden and the Smithsonian Institution.

She performed with Willie Nelson and Neil Young and for the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela.

“Joanne is to contemporary Native American music what Aretha Franklin, Etta James or Billie Holiday are to their respective genres,” Ed Koban, a Native American Music Award nominee and Mohawk tribal member, told Native News Online. “A timeless and elegant voice that did not need vocal tricks or gymnastics, instead was gentle, soft and pure.”

Joanne Shenandoah recorded a track for Robbie Robertson’s 1998 album “Contact From the Underworld of Redboy.” “She weaves you into a trance with her beautiful Iroquois chants,” Robertson said of her singing, “and wraps her voice around you like a warm blanket on a cool winter’s night.”




With her music, along with the content of her lyrics, she sought to counter centuries of mistreatment and marginalization of Native Americans; she also pleaded for her listeners to protect the Earth, and she hoped to offer solace to the soul.

In “Prophecy Song,” she calls on her listeners to awaken: “We are now reminded to be aware of our place upon this Earth,” she intones, “and to fulfill our obligations to ourselves, our families, nations, the natural world and to the Creator.”

Joanne Lynn Shenandoah was born June 23, 1957, in Syracuse, New York. Her mother, Maisie (Winder) Shenandoah, was an artist, and her father, Clifford Shenandoah, was an iron worker who raised the family on the Oneida Reservation, just east of Syracuse. Her ancestors included Chief Skenandoa (the spelling varies), an ally to George Washington during the American Revolution.

Joanne Shenandoah may have been destined to be a singer from birth; her Oneida Wolf Clan name, Tekaliwakwha, means “she sings.” But as she grew into adulthood, she planned to become a businesswoman. For a time, she sang only informally, at weddings and funerals.

She studied business administration, first at Andrews University in Michigan, then at Montgomery Community College in Maryland. She left one semester before graduating to start a computer consulting business in Bethesda, Maryland.

One day in 1990 she had a revelation, her husband said in an interview. While she was sitting in an office in Arlington, Virginia, staring out of the window, she saw a massive oak tree being taken down. It occurred to her, George-Kanentiio said, that just as the tree was being uprooted, she too had been uprooted, removed from her Native soil.

“That’s the moment she decided to return to Oneida,” he said. “She was very successful, making a lot of money, but she wanted to make music full time, and so she left, without a safety net.”

She had already recorded a solo CD in 1989, “Joanne Shenandoah,” and after she moved back to Oneida in 1990, other gigs and albums followed. She gained national attention when she was included on the soundtrack for “Northern Exposure,” an early 1990s television show set in Alaska, which showcased her song “I May Want a Man.”

It was during this time that she met George-Kanentiio on a blind date arranged by a friend. He was the editor of a Native American newspaper, Akwesasne Notes, on the Mohawk Territory in Northern New York. They were married nine months later, in 1991. He worked as a writer and became her road manager as they traveled all over the world.

In addition to her husband, daughter and sister Diane, she is survived by a grandson and three other sisters, Wanda Wood and Victoria and Danielle Shenandoah.

She performed at both of President Bill Clinton’s inaugurations. And at the invitation of Hillary Clinton, then the first lady, Joanne Shenandoah composed music for the unveiling of the Sacagawea dollar coin at the White House in 1999. In 2012, she traveled to the Vatican for the canonization of the first Native American saint, Kateri Tekakwitha.

“Joanne’s music was meditative, healing and uplifted the spirit,” Michelle Schenandoah, her niece (she spells her surname differently) and the founder of Rematriation Magazine & Media, wrote in a recent tribute. “Her lyrics helped comfort those suffering from grief, healing from physical ailments and is often used in the delivery of babies, surgeries and played for those transitioning to the spirit realm.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.