[1] Having grown up in an environment which placed little emphasis on both her Native American and white background, much of her verse deals with her search for her personal identity.
She began making her own path as a young woman when she dropped out of high school to go to San Francisco and join the American Indian Movement (AIM) and took part in the protest occupation of Alcatraz.
Besides the roles already mentioned of poet, historian, painter, illustrator, and anthropologist, Wendy Rose is also a teacher, researcher, consultant, editor, panelist, bibliographer, and advisor.
Rose is a member of the American Federation of Teachers and has served as a facilitator for the Association of Non-Federally Recognized California Tribes.
Some of the major themes explored in Wendy Rose's works are themes relating to the Native American experience (both specifically her own and also more broadly applied to other cultures of marginalization): colonialism, imperialism, dependency, nostalgia for the old ways, reverence for grandparents, resentment for conditions of the present, plight of reservation and urban Indians, sense of hopelessness, the power of the trickster, feminism as synonymous with heritage, deadly compromise, symbolism of all that has been lost (such as land), tension between the desire to retrieve the past and the inevitability of change, arrogance of white people, problems of half-breeds (or mixed-bloods).
Rose is opposed to the idea that through reading and hearing about Indian culture anyone can simply claim to be a spokesperson for the Native American experience.
As scholar David Perron so eloquently puts it: "We come to understand that the diversity of Rose's poetry is not about distinctions, but about wholeness.
Wendy Rose has been one of the leading voices in resurgent Native American poetry for the past quarter of a century.
In an interview with Joseph Bruchac, she told him that she sees her task as "storykeeper" as she chronicles the sufferings of displaced peoples and biracial outcasts worldwide in addition to treating ecological and feminist issues.
At the same time, diversity is also apparent and expressed through multiple perspectives and covering a broad range of universally human experiences.
Stemming from her work with anthropology, she writes about bones auctioned, objects sold, and bodies stuffed for our edification in a museum display.