* That "NATIVE AMERICAN" Angle . . .

[This is from an email of mine (August 2001) to the director of my Ph.D. committee, a light respite from slaving over my dissertation. (Written before I came across Alexie's poem "From the Unauthorized Biography of Me" [2000], which has a section similar in content and tone.)]

YOU KNOW YOUR DISSERTATION HAS A "NATIVE AMERICAN" ANGLE WHEN . . .

1) Most of the cities of publication in your bibliography are Tucson, Lincoln [NE], and other God-forsaken places "out West."

2) Most of the book titles in your bibliography have either "Sky," or "Earth," or both; or "Turtle," or "Bear"—or both. . . . But thank God that 99% of the editors' names are Anglo, so you can spell 'em. (But "Rothenberg, ed." and "Lowenfels, ed." still cause problems—and intermittent bemusement & laughter).

3) Most of these same books also have a "watermark" graphic of an eagle silhouette or an eagle feather. (But you kinda like it 'cuz your book's about "Birds & Ind'uns," anyway. . . .)

4) You had to reject half your potential sources because they were written for New Age bookstores by a white person with an adopted Indian name (usually with "Sky," "Earth," "Turtle," "Bear," or "Eagle [Feather]" in it somewhere). This person is also into astrology and crystals.

5) You can't find one good thing written about Native Americans before 1970—and not one bad thing since. (Who said A.I.M. was a failure?!)

6) You email Dennis Banks & Russell Means for interviews, but they're both busy doing voice-overs for Disney movies.

7) You take your daughter "home" to the Badlands & the Black Hills [in western South Dakota, home of the Lakota], and end up spendin' $500 on tourist traps & trinkets. The trinkets at Wall Drug all say "Made by Real Indians"; and all fall apart as soon as you get 'em to the car. ("Oh, I see, Emma, honey: the small print says, 'Made by Real Indians in Cherokee, North Carolina[!?].'")

8) Your dissertation's completion date is now sometime ten years hence since you've once again come to appreciate the notion of "Indian Time."