Jon Hickey visited Colgate University on Thursday, Nov. 20 for the final installment in the 2025 Living Writers series to discuss his debut novel, “Big Chief.” This event was co-sponsored by the Native American Studies Program and was a strong finish for a series that has entertained and brought together students, faculty, alumni and the town of Hamilton through living literature.
CJ Hauser, associate professor of English, introduced Hickey to the crowd in Persson Auditorium.
“Hickey is an enrolled citizen of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Anishinaabe,” Hauser said. “His work explores themes of belonging in Indigenous experience off and on the reservation, how the mid-20th century Relocation and Termination Acts have fractured the sense of Indigenous identity and how people seek to reclaim connection to their communities in environments far from home.”
“Big Chief” is a novel of politics and choices as the main character, Mitch, works alongside his childhood best friend and tribal president to run the government of the fictional Passage Rouge reservation.
“As a gripping tale of power, corruption and the meaning of belonging, it was named one of the most anticipated novels of 2025 by the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times and Lit Hub,” Hauser said.
Hickey then took to the stage with a confident and humorous presence.
“It’s an honor to be here, and I want to thank [Hauser] and the Living Writers series,” Hickey said. “Yes, I am alive. I’m a writer. So I fit the bill.”
Hickey discussed his journey of writing the novel and where he took inspiration for a politically driven story.
“I had grand ambitions with this novel. It’s a lot of fun to be able to talk to people who get it. One of the things I always point out is that it started as an homage to ‘All the King’s Men’ by Robert Penn Warren, which is a book that is very perfect right now. We’re talking about populism, we’re talking authoritarianism,” Hickey said. “It also became a sort of lodestar and goal that I read this book forward and backwards, lived within it, and saw something in it that I thought was transferable to communities unknown.”
He also discussed his relationship with the sense of belonging that the main character, Mitch, grapples with throughout the novel.
“My writing is always circling around my sense of belonging to this place that means something to me very spiritually, very personally. It’s where my family comes from. And yet I have never lived there. I’ve always felt some sort of separation from this place,” Hickey said. “That is what drives a lot of the writing that I’ve done.”
Hickey’s decision to make a fictional reservation for the novel was an informed choice.
“I could make up the place, but I can’t make up the tribe. I wanted to make sure that we were honoring this idea that there is no Pan-Indian sort of thing. We’re not interchangeable. The tribes are not interchangeable with each other. And so often in our discourse, they are. So, it was very important that I name-checked the tribe and talked about how things are done and was as specific as possible, but that it also weighed against the fact that I know people that are involved with their governance,” Hickey said.
Senior Macy Reisman reflected on the last Living Writers event of the year.
“Jon Hickey’s event was a really great way to wrap up the Living Writers season,” Reisman said. “‘Big Chief’ is a political novel, and that is especially interesting given the nature of Living Writers and that it’s so current. It was also great to see Hickey’s personality shine through and how that is echoed in the novel and in terms of the event itself.”
While Living Writers is done for this year, all interested readers are encouraged to look forward to next fall when a new season kicks off.
