For Gladstone, performing is a way of life

Earlier this month, Jack Gladstone had kids at the Columbia Falls Junior High singing and laughing right with him, as he told tales about Chinook winds and grizzly bears.

Gladstone has been telling stories through song and verse for almost as long as he can remember. He was born in Seattle in 1958, the son of Wallace Gladstone, a Blackfeet Tribal member. Wallace was a World War II veteran, manning a 20 mm anti-aircraft gun for the Navy’s Third Fleet.

His mother was a full-blooded German and the two were married after the war and settled in the Northwest.

“I’m a hybrid,” Gladstone said in an interview last week.

Gladstone attended Roman Catholic schools growing up and was naturally musically talented. He became especially in tune when his father sobered up when Gladstone was 9.

“Music in my own life had been a place of fascination in peace and order,” he said, noting he was singing before he was talking.

He learned guitar at an early age and in high school developed another talent — as an offensive lineman on the football team. He would go on to get a football scholarship at the University of Washington and played in the Rose Bowl, as the Huskies beat Michigan.

“I was probably the smallest guard on the West Coast,” he quipped.

A fan of folk music, Gladstone began playing bars and venues in the Pacific Northwest in 1981, his goal being to keep people in their seats long enough to order another round.

He ended up back in Montana after graduating college and taught public speaking at the Blackfeet Community College in 1982.

Meanwhile in Glacier National Park, Blackfeet speaker Harold Gray had started a program to educate park visitors about Blackfeet culture along with his son, Joey. Joey would go on to Cornell University and became a medical doctor.

In 1985, Ranger Bruce Fladmark put an ad in the local newspaper looking for speakers to keep the talks going and Gladstone took on the task, along with the late Darrell Kipp and Darrell Norman and Curly Bear Wagner.

The Native American Speaks program was off and running and continues to this day, 40-plus years later.

Gladstone also crafted a career from his music and performances, all of which highlight the Blackfeet culture and its stories, as told from generation to generation. He’s written hundreds of original songs and also performed with Rob Quist, where he honed his craft and made it a point to tell authentic Montana stories. Quist became a mentor and big brother, he noted.

“It’s imperative that Montana is beyond cowboys and Indians and mountain men,” he said.

In addition to performing, Gladstone has also been taking people on tours in Glacier through the Sun Tours buses on the Going-to-the-Sun Road.

At 67, he just enjoys the people.

“To be successful. To have a good life you need to have a relationship with three main factors: balance, rhythm and harmony,” he said.

And listen to the many voices in the world.

“Find the sweet spot in the middle where you can empathize,” he said.