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

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.

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

Being a mixed-blood person of Ojibway and European ancestry, I always found that I only heard one side of the story - that was the conquerers' side, the side of the French Jesuit missionaries that came to live in what is now Ontario.

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.

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

Sometimes, it's not getting what we want that offers us the most important Lessons