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

I never want to play down to the reader. I think readers are willing to go along if they're intrigued.

The history needs to serve the story, not the story the history. But at the same time you can't stray too far.

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 were incredibly complex societies already existing in North America long before Europeans arrived. So many people think that before European contact it was just Natives huddling around a fire, waiting for civilization to come save them. But that was not the case.

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.

We aren't the masters of the earth. We're the servants.