The Inconvenient Indian (32 page)

As important were the conversations that I had with fellow graduate students in the English department—Steve Tatum, Robert Haynie, Bob King, and Barry Sarchett—who were engaged in the disciplines of western literature and western history. We all played on the English department’s inter-mural softball team, the Hot Tamales, which contributed nothing to this book, but was fun nevertheless.

When I was working and studying in Salt Lake City, I met Leroy Littlebear (Blood) who was finishing a law degree at the university. We became friends, and when he returned to the University of Lethbridge in Lethbridge, Alberta, to head up the Native Studies Department, he offered me a job teaching Native literature and Native history. I spent the next ten years on the high Alberta prairies, braving the wind and the cold winters, working with Native and non-Native students, and hanging out with folks on the reserve. I even played (badly) in an Indian basketball league with Narcisse Blood (Blood), Martin Heavyhead (Blood) and Morris Manyfingers (Blood), in which tribal history was always a topic of conversation. My time in Lethbridge with colleagues such as Christine Miller (Blackfeet), Marie Small Face-Marule (Blood), Don Frantz, Meno Boldt, Alfred Youngman (Cree), Tony Long, and Amethyst First Rider (Blood) was an intensive course in contemporary reserve politics, oral history, small-town sociology, and very bad puns.

I should mention that I also met my partner, Dr. Helen Hoy, at the University of Lethbridge. Which just goes to show that treasures can be found in unlikely places.

Helen and I went on to the University of Minnesota in 1990, where I taught Native literature, got an interesting though not always pleasant crash course in urban Indian politics, and had the pleasure of working with other scholars on that campus—Carol Miller (Cherokee), Alan Kilpatrick (Cherokee), Ron Libertus (White Earth Ojibway), Terry Collins, Jean O’Brien (White Earth Ojibway), George Lipsitz, John Wright, Brenda Child (Red Lake Ojibway), Elaine and Lary May, and Carter Meland (White Earth Ojibway)—whose thoughts and ideas are a part of this book.

I landed at the University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario in the summer of 1995 and began the actual work of writing
The Inconvenient Indian
sometime in 2006. In that enterprise I had the help of a great many people, Native and non-Native, throughout North America, many whose work I’ve read, and others who took the time to talk with me—in many cases, pointing out the errors in my research and in my thinking: Jace Weaver (Cherokee), Linda Vandenberg, Daniel Fischlin, Ajay Heble, Jeannette Armstrong (Okanagan), Christine Bold, Basil Johnston (Anishinaabe), Ric Knowles, Drew Hayden Taylor (Ojibway), Harry Lane, Douglas Sanderson (Opaskwayak Cree), Philip Deloria (Standing Rock Sioux), Buzz and Judy Webb, Craig Womak (Creek-Cherokee), Evan Connell, Paul Chatt Smith (Comanche), Robert Warrior (Osage), N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa-Cherokee), Robert Conley (Cherokee), Donald Smith, Pamela Palmater (Mi’kmaq), John Ralston Saul, and others whom I have forgotten at the moment. I will be embarrassed by my memory lapse when I am reminded of their contribution. I should also recognize the University of Guelph, especially the English Department, for the support and encouragement of my research and writing.

In particular, I want to acknowledge Carol Miller (Cherokee), Brian Dippie, Daniel Justice (Cherokee) and Margery Fee, all of whom took time from their hectic schedules to read early drafts and provided me with critical comments and sage advice. My thanks also to Benjamin Hoy who helped with the research at a crucial stage of the book.

Yet for all this,
The Inconvenient Indian
wouldn’t have happened had it not been for the presence in my life of my partner, Helen Hoy, who is always prepared to wrestle me to the ground on points of Native literature and history. It was her intelligence, kindnesses, and perseverance that helped keep me and the book on track when all I wanted to do was to run away to Tofino and hide out in a fog bank. This book is as much hers as it is mine. No one knows that more than me. Now you know it, too.