Hmmm. Possible, but I didn't know anything about Kate being a kid in Michigan. Wikipedia says she was born in San Francisco in 1942 and died in San Francisco in 1986 of leukemia at the age of 44.

I moved from LA to Fresno in 1976, and then to Sacramento in 1980, and north to Placer County in 2002. As I moved north, I became more and more aware of the Native American heritage of this area. I came to treasure it, and I suppose Kate did the same. It's all around us, and it's hard to ignore.

-Joe-