work in Alaska, studying the effects of offshore drilling on the Native Alaskan communities. At a time of rising Native American activism, in 1972, Dorris helped form Dartmouth College's Native American Studies department, and served as its first chair. In 1971, he became one of the first unmarried men in the United States to adopt a child. His adopted son, a 3-year-old Lakota boy named Reynold Abel, was eventually diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome. Dorris' struggle to understand and care for his son became the subject of his 1987 memoir The Broken Cord (in which he uses the pseudonym "Adam" for his son). Dorris adopted two more Native American children, Jeffrey Sava in 1974 and Madeline Hannah in 1976, both of whom also likely suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome. He wrote the text to accompany the photographs of Joseph C. Farber in the book Native Americans: Five Hundred Years After (1975). He was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 1977 for his work in Anthropology & Cultural Studies. In 1980, he took his three adopted children with him from Cornish, New Hampshire to New Zealand, where he had arranged a year's sabbatical. After returning to the United States in 1981, he married Louise Erdrich, a writer of Anishinaabe, German-American, and Métis descent. They had met 10 years earlier while he was teaching at Dartmouth and she was a student. During his sabbatical in New Zealand, Dorris and Erdrich had begun corresponding regularly by mail. After their marriage, she adopted his three children. They had three daughters together: Persia Andromeda, Pallas Antigone, and Aza Marion. Dorris and Erdrich contributed to each other's writing and together wrote romance fiction under the pseudonym Milou North to supplement their income. Many of the latter pieces were published in the British magazine Woman. Erdrich dedicated her novels The Beet Queen (1986),Tracks (1988), and The Bingo Palace to Dorris. The family lived in Cornish, New Hampshire. While teaching at Dartmouth, Dorris frequently mentored other students. He was part of the successful effort to eliminate the college's Indian mascot. In 1985, after the couple had received major grants, the family moved for a year to Northfield, Minnesota. Beginning in 1986, Dorris' son Sava was sent to boarding school and military school. Madaline began attending boarding school when she was 12. After the success of The Broken Cord in 1989, and an advance of $1.5 million for the outline