Fascinating, often hilarious, always devastatingly truthful, The Inconvenient Indian is destined to become a classic of historical narrative. For those who wish to better understand Native peoples, it is a must read. For those who don't wish to understand, it is even more so.

As a fiction writer, of course, you need to take some leeway with certain aspects of history to make the story work.

From a craft standpoint, telling a story in the first-person present tense over the course of 500 pages is a daunting challenge.

People will say that Canada, unlike America, was not birthed from violence. But I want to say, "What are you talking about?" It's just not true.

There's the concept that dreams are as important - if not more important - than reality. The attention that one pays to those things in the shadows is very much a part of the Indian experience.

America seems to celebrate its more violent past, but Canada doesn't like to recognize those things. The willingness to accept the existence of violence separates our two countries.

There's a few scholars that object to how the italicized sections suggest that Native people are to take some part in the blame for how colonization occurred. But I say, "Yes they are." Not nearly as much blame as the colonizers, of course. But we are not just victims. I hate this idea that we are all just victimized and oppressed and etcetera etcetera. It's dehumanizing in its own way.