Jack D. Forbes is an internationally acclaimed writer, scholar, educator, and activist of Powhatan-Renapé and Delaware-Lenápe heritage. Born in Long Beach, California on January 7, 1934, Jack spent his childhood and youth in El Monte, Eagle Rock, and Los Angeles. Throughout his lifetime, Jack advocated forcefully for Indigenous sovereignty, self-determination, education, and environmental and human rights. Jack earned his bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1955, his master’s degree in history in 1956, and his PhD in history and anthropology in 1959, all from the University of Southern California. He joined the faculty at the University of California at Davis in 1969, where the Native American Studies program was established the same year through his vision and leadership. In 1971, Jack and David Risling (Hoopa) created Degoniwida-Quetzalcoatl University (D-Q U) in Winters, which was the first college in California exclusively for Native Americans. The scope and diversity of Jack’s writing and scholarship are vast and include the books Apache, Navaho and Spaniard (1960 and 1994), Columbus and Other Cannibals (1992), Africans and Native Americans (1993), Only Approved Indians (1995), Red Blood: A Novel (1997), and The American Discovery of Europe (2007), as well as monographs, editorials, and many poems in addition to those published in Songs for California. In addition to his teaching at UC Davis, Jack taught internationally as a Fulbright scholar and visiting lecturer and mentored generations of undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty in the discipline of Native American Studies. Jack passed at the age of 77 in Davis, California.