Gary (Jeshel) Forrester (born 3 July 1946) is a musician,[1][2][3] composer,[1][2][3] novelist,[2][4][5][6][3] poet,[7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][3] short-story writer,[15][16] biographer,[17] memoirist,[18] academic,[19] and historian[20] based in Rotoiti Forest, New Zealand.

"[3] According to Fishhead, in addition to his teaching fellowship lecturing in legal ethics at the Victoria University of Wellington Law School from 2008 to 2016, Forrester had published "three novels and a book of poems, [was] a successful bluegrass composer and musician, an advocate for indigenous rights, and a father of six children.

[36][37][38] The ABC observed: "Like our landscape, the history of Australia is best told by our poets, and this recording offers a unique slice... of our bushland, our people, our dreams, and our extraordinary sense of humour.

"[36][39] Forrester's music also appeared on the Larrikin Records 1996 composite album, Give Me a Home Among the Gum Trees, along with Australian country-folk icons Eric Bogle, Judy Small, The Bushwackers, and others.

"[42][43][44] In December 1988, Mike Jackson of The Canberra Times wrote that the Rank Strangers' second album, Uluru (the Aboriginal name for Australia's central Ayers Rock), "featured some delightful lead breaks on mandolin (Andrew Hook), banjo (Peter Somerville) and fiddle (Gerry Hale), and some rock-solid accompaniment from guitarist (Forrester) and bass player (Philomena Carroll)."

The composer, novelist, poet, academic, and legal advocate for indigenous peoples takes a sideways step from his bluegrass past with the Rank Strangers to deliver a no-frills set that is, for the most part, nothing more than the man, his guitar and harmonica.

He's one of those people you might meet only to find that beyond the lack of self-important promotion, his life's work, influence and achievements are those of someone who has already left a footprint (as an activist, academic, novelist, poet and musician).

As a reference point only, Forrester evokes the ghosts of preelectric Dylan, whose Girl of The North Country he covers, early Johnny Cash and the melodic sensibilities of Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson.

"[56] Belfield wrote that "dates stand out like beacons – the 1866 cavalry massacre in the Battle of the Hundred in the Hand in the Crazy Horse history lesson Hoka Hey, the 1961 tension between the Bible and the indigenous sun dances in Hannah Cried, the 1945 return from war of the doomed Blue Eyed Boy – but it's the realism and vitality of the characters that loom largest.

The Sunday Star-Times rated The Old Churchyard as a 4.5-star album (out of 5), stating that "Forrester is a throwback, in the most respectful way, to a time when songwriters had something to say and were armed with just an acoustic guitar and a suitcase full of songs.

"[35] Noting Forrester's background as "academic, poet, lawyer, nomad, activist, author and troubadour," the review found that he "seamlessly weaves his life experiences" into his songs with words that are "timely and universal, touching on themes such as domestic abuse, unrequited love, and personal anguish.

"[59] NZ Musician noted that Forrester's Martin D-28S guitar "sounds almost like a Carter Family autoharp on [the title track], lending the song a back-porch authenticity.

"[61] On 26 April 2020, while in isolation during New Zealand's COVID-19 lockdown, Forrester put together a new solo acoustic album of 11 original songs and 2 covers, for non-commercial release on the Bandcamp online music streaming website.

Houseboating in the Ozarks[4] (Dufour Editions, 2006), which includes fictional accounts of a bluegrass band, is the story of a circular journey through the American Midwest, with reflective detours to Australia, South America, Japan, and Italy.

Houseboating in the Ozarks meanders through tribal and Western spiritual traditions, including those of Aboriginal Australia and Lakota sundances in Green Grass, South Dakota, led by Yuwipi medicine man Frank Fools Crow.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch found Houseboating in the Ozarks idiosyncratic but engaging: an autobiographical "extended meditation on the difficulty of preserving familial and social memory, and sustaining and transmitting values and culture in our mobile, throwaway society.

"[2] A review in the Emerging Writers Network declared Connoisseur to be "smartly written in Forrester's straightforward clear sentences which have always had the echo of Vonnegut", and that the novel created "a unique point of view that is so broad it is at once a Gordian knot of irony, a psychological landscape, and a state of mind.

Begotten, Not Made, Forrester's third novel, recounts the travels of a wandering musician and his deaf sidekick, shuffling along on a doomed walking marathon from New York to San Francisco in the 1920s.

A lengthy extract from Begotten, Not Made was published in 2007 by the University of Nebraska Press, in Scoring from Second,[66] an anthology featuring the works of "thirty accomplished writers"[67][68] from North America, including Michael Chabon, Andre Dubus, and others.

[69] More Deaths than One is a picaresque journey from New Zealand to America, in search of the Central Illinois roots of the late novelist David Foster Wallace, the 21st century cultural paradigm known as Metamodernism, and the meaning of life.

[18] In a review, the Quincy Herald-Whig described the book as "a memoir and historical commentary on the lives of his parents, Harry and Rose, and what impacted the family during their stays in various parts of west-central, central, and southern Illinois.

The Herald-Whig's review noted that "Harry Forrester did not spend much time in Quincy, but it's safe to say his impact will be remembered forever", recalling that his landmark coaching decision "came at the height of racial insensitivity in the mid-to-late 1950s and was a full decade before Texas Western (now UTEP) started five black players in what is now the NCAA Division I national championship game.

The story is the whimsical tale of an oddball poet who contributes to a baseball writing conference in Tennessee, suffering near-death experiences and failures to communicate along the way, only to find redemption, at last, at "home."

[74] In 2018, an abridged version of Forrester's biography of the late writer Philip F. Deaver, "One Dog Barked, the Other Howled," was published in a special edition of The Legal Studies Forum.

During these years, while living on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, he also advised members of the American Indian Movement, including activist Kenny Kane[79] and others, and assisted Lakota clients, including Kane, Russell Means,[80] Madonna Thunder Hawk, and spiritual leader Sidney Uses Knife Keith,[81] prepare for interviews and participation in Peter Matthiessen's landmark 1983 book, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse.

[22][3] During piercing day, which was guided by Yuwipi medicine man Frank Fools Crow, a meadowlark glided down to Forrester's shoulder from the tall cottonwood Sun Pole at the center of the sundance circle.

Through Kamara Willis, Forrester became interested in the rights of indigenous peoples, and left Australia in 1980 to work on Indian reservations[25] in the states of South Dakota and Oregon in the USA.

Upon the successful restoration of Oregon's Grand Ronde and Klamath tribes,[26][83] Forrester wrote his book on Indian law[27] and returned to Australia to form the Rank Strangers and represent Aboriginal clients[115] and others.

In 1990, Forrester led a group of eleven public service colleagues in mounting legal and political challenges to improprieties and mismanagement within the State of Victoria's accident compensation scheme, known at the time as "WorkCare.

[142] In a case before the Equal Opportunity Board, Forrester's colleague, African-born lawyer Dr. Nii Wallace-Bruce, received $33,000 in costs in July 1991, in the course of settling his claims of racism and other improprieties.