When you start to look at Native American history, you realize that, very far from being a peaceful, morally superior people, Native Americans were not that different from Europeans.

Nothing prepares you for making art except making art. You have to do it to get better.

When you start to look at Native American history, you realize that, very far from being a peaceful, morally superior people, Native Americans were not that different from Europeans.

At 16, I dropped out of school and spent five years working as a bicycle mechanic and volunteering in a Trauma Centre before ultimately deciding to go to university.

You have to believe in yourself and only trust your own vision and instincts. If Id listened to what other people thought about my work in the first 10 years that I was a writer, I never would have made it to begin with.

My first published novel, American Rust, took three and a half years of full-time work to write. But I wrote two apprentice novels before that.

Each time a high-wage job is lost, a family is turned upside down. And that affects the communities where they live.