For over four decades Jesse has been immersed in Algonquian language reclamation efforts. He is the son of Abenaki author and storyteller Dr. Joseph Bruchac III. A proud citizen of the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation, Jesse, along with his older brother James Bruchac, grew up immersed in storytelling, the natural world, and Native and Adirondack cultural traditions.
In Budapest with Jamestown cast members, including Moses Brings Plenty (Yellowstone), Kalani Queypo (Slow West), Gene BraveRock (Wonder Woman 1984)
Jesse has lectured at Yale, Harvard, Dartmouth, and Princeton, as well as at the Linguistic Society of America, the Algonquian Conference, the Symposium on American Indian Languages (SAIL), and the Computer-Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO). He has taught Western Abenaki at the University of Southern Maine and Middlebury College, where he founded the School of Abenaki and serves as its director.
He has also worked with PBS, AMC, Carnival Films, NBC/Universal, National Geographic, the BBC, BBC Radio 3, The Science Channel, and others as an Eastern Algonquian translator, a language coach, and composer.
As a musician his music had been a primary driver in language reclamation efforts, and has been featured in television, film, and radio. He’s performed at the Clearwater Festival, Old Songs, the Dance Flurry, and many other folk festivals over the last three decades.
He has shared the stage with Joanne Shenandoah, Bill Miller, and Kevin Locke, performed at Woodstock ’94, and as a member of the Dawnland Singers opened for The Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan. In 1996 he toured Belgium as a member of Awasos Sigwan, a drum group from the Abenaki reserve of Odanak, PQ.
Jesse Bowman with his son Jacob Bowman at the 2022 Boston Film Festival world premier of The Wind & the Reckoning.
While projects promoting and revitalizing the Indigenous languages of the American Northeast are his passion, Jesse considers his greatest accomplishment raising his children Carolyn Rose and Jacob Bowman to speak the Abenaki language fluently.
