Fanny and Friends Historical Interpretation

Joyce Badgley Hunsaker is an award-winning historical interpreter, author, and storyteller whose meticulously researched and insightful works have earned her international acclaim as writer, historian, and actress.

Over the past thirty years she had presented living histories from wilderness campfires to the halls of the U.S. Congress. Her work has been featured in symphonies, schools and universities, national libraries and museums, on television and radio, and with the NBA Portland Trailblazers. She performed by invitation for international audiences at the 2002 Winter Olympics, and at Jefferson’s Monticello for the national kickoff of the Lewis & Clark Bicentennial Commemoration in 2003. In 2007, she was invited to perform at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.

Ms. Hunsaker’s command performances also include such distinguished audiences as ranking members of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Geographic Society, the Nature Conservancy, Disney Corporation, Public Lands Foundation, and Russian Educational Television. Her portrayal of Sacagawea was chosen by Scholastic, Inc., as a spotlight feature in its highly praised on-line encyclopedia, The New Book of Knowledge. Her living history dramas, books, articles, and workshops are currently being used in Russia to teach American history and English.

Her nonfiction book, Sacagawea Speaks, Beyond The Shining Mountains With Lewis & Clark, was named History Book of the Year in 2001 and was a finalist for the 2002 Benjamin Franklin Award. The book’s children’s edition, They Call Me Sacagawea, was a James Madison Book Award nominee in 2004. Both won the endorsement of Sacagawea family descendants and descendants of original Lewis & Clark expedition members. You can read her TIME magazine article about Sacagawea on TIME’s website http://www.time.com/time/2002/lewis_clark/lsacagawea.html .

In 2004, Hunsaker’s Seeing The Elephant, Voices from the Oregon Trail, was a SPUR Award finalist for Western literature and a finalist for History Book of the Year.

Joyce Badgley Hunsaker’s ancestral bloodlines include Cherokee and Lakota Sioux, English, French, and Scots-Irish. Several tribes have honored her with ceremonial names. She is also a fourth-generation Oregon Trail pioneer descendant, and a fifth-generation California Trail pioneer descendant. The Oregon-California Trails Association has presented her with its highest national award for her work about the Great Westward Migration and its impact on Native American cultures.

Her interpretive travel books in the prestigious Story Behind The Scenery series include Grand Staircase-Escalante and Oregon Trail Center.

Requests for personalized scripting, writing, performing, and programming should be made directly through the website. Workshops and training are available on a case-by-case basis.