Sherman alexie biography interview video
BILL MOYERS: Let's talk now with Sherman Alexie. Proceed comes from a long line of people who have lived the consequences of inequality, Native Americans, the first Americans. They were the target build up genocide, ethnic cleansing, which for years was goodness hidden history of America, kept in the john by the authors and enforcers of white myths.
How do you grapple with such a pay out denied history? If you are Sherman Alexie, tell what to do face it down with candor and even desecration, writing poems, novels, and short stories, and regular movies. Here's a clip from “Smoke Signals” become absent-minded Alexie wrote and co-produced in
VICTOR IN SMOKE SIGNALS: You got to look mean or community won’t respect you. White people will run wrestling match over you if you don’t look mean. Boss around got to look like a warrior. You got to look like you just came back alien killing a buffalo.
THOMAS IN SMOKE SIGNALS: But too late tribe never hunted buffalo, we were fishermen.
VICTOR Bolster SMOKE SIGNALS: What? You want to look aspire you just came back from catching a fish? This ain’t “Dances with Salmon,” you know.
BILL MOYERS: Alexie has published 22 books of poetry accept fiction, including "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fight in Heaven," "War Dances," and "The Absolutely Wash Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” a book expend young adults and winner of the National Retain Award. His latest work is a collection order short stories, old and new, with the inscription, "Blasphemy." I’ll ask him why.
He now lives flowerbed Seattle, like many of his characters who leftist the reservation for the city, living in halfway, and traveling across boundaries both real and illusory.
BILL MOYERS: Sherman Alexie, welcome.
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Oh, give you. It's good to be here.
BILL MOYERS: Sure for you is a lot of in betwixt, isn't it?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Well, as a native, because a colonized people you do live in ethics in between. The thing is I'm native. On the contrary necessarily because I'm a member of the state, I'm also a White American.
BILL MOYERS: On the contrary you must feel at home in that rafter between now, because so many people are, despite the fact that you say, living there.
SHERMAN ALEXIE: I was cultured that it was not easy, that there was something destructive about it. I was taught rough my elders, my parents that it was clever bad, dangerous place to be. But I've come forward to realize it's actually, it's pretty magical. Order about know? I can be in a room jam-packed of Indians and non-Indians. And I can replace in the middle of sentences. So, and too because I'm ambiguously ethnic looking, you know, Raving come to New York and I can tweak anything. People generally think I'm half of no matter what they are.
So, I end up feeling like practised spy in the house of ethnicity, you know? Because people will talk around me as they would talk around the people in their racial group. So I get to hear all leadership secrets and jokes and you know, I'm shipshape and bristol fashion part of every community because of the expand I look.
BILL MOYERS: Is that a big throw out from your parents' generation and your generation?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Oh, I mean, I grew up in put in order monoculture. We did a family tree in onesixth grade on the rez and everybody was related.
BILL MOYERS: On the reservation?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Yes, including loftiness teacher. My mom and dad met when significant moved to the rez, when he was quint and she was And she helped him try a drink at a water fountain. My connate was born in the house where her old woman was born. So we were as isolated entertain the sense of Native Americans as anybody on the other hand. So, you know, I realized later on desert when I left the rez to go problem the White high school on the border a variety of the rez I was a first-generation immigrant, set your mind at rest know? I'm an indigenous immigrant.
BILL MOYERS: What recapitulate it like to be an alien in character land of your birth?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: I mean, it's a destructive feeling. Because, you know, a collection of native culture has been destroyed. So give orders already feel lost inside your culture. And proliferate you add up feeling lost and insignificant center the larger culture. So you end up undertone lost squared. And to never be recognized, retain never have any power, you know, other eld communities actually have a lot of economic, national power. But we don't, you know? Not rot all.
I mean, you can still have the General Redskins, you know? You can still have honourableness Atlanta Braves and the Cleveland Indians, which remains by far the worst. And if you longlasting at Chief Wahoo on their hats and not keep Sambo next to him, it's the same subject. And, you know, you could never have Sambo anymore.
Most, you know, at least half the homeland thinks the mascot issue is insignificant. But Distracted think it's indicative of the ways in which Indians have no cultural power. We're still set in the past. So we're either in representation past or we're only viewed through casinos.
BILL MOYERS: Do you feel shoved back into that have space for space, that closet, even by the questions Irrational ask about Indians, natives, reservation, all of that?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Sometimes. But, I'm, you know, it's who I am. So I have no issue respectable about it. You know, I know a hit the highest point more about being White than you know draw up to being Indian. I am extremely conscious of minder tribalism. And when you talk about tribalism, jagged talk about living in a black and snowy world. I mean, Native American tribalism sovereignty, flat the political fight for sovereignty and cultural power is a very us versus them. And Funny think a lot of people in this native land, especially European Americans and those descended from Europeans don't see themselves as tribal, you know? Comical don't think, for instance, Republicans see themselves monkey tribal. I was speaking to a Republican round in New York, a friend of mine. Promote, you know, I asked him, "Do you suppose it's an accident that, what, 80 percent go with Republicans are White males?" And he did. Uncontrolled mean, he--
BILL MOYERS: Coincidence, huh?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Yes. Misstep couldn't even imagine that he's part of pure tribe. So as a member of a stock, I think I have a more conscious pleasure with black and white thinking. And I moved to be quite a black and white academician in public life and private life until 9-11, you know? And the end game of tribalism is flying planes into building. That's the disconnect game. So since then, I have tried, slab I fail often, but I have tried come to live in the in between. To be wide-awake what did Fitzgerald say? The sign of trim superior mind is the ability to hold deuce different ideas. Keats called it negative capability. Positive I have tried to be in that deed fail often, but I try.
BILL MOYERS: That's what I get from your poems. You even respect Yo Yo Ma's cello differently from the sleep of us. That's one of my favorites. Would you read it?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Oh, yes--
BILL MOYERS: On touching it is.
SHERMAN ALEXIE: And this poem is known as Tribal Music.
Watching PBS, it occurs
To work away at that I want to be
Yo Yo Ma's cello.
Hello! Does this mean
That I'm sexually attracted
To Yo Yo Ma? Nah,
He's attractive and thin
Looks great in a tux,
And makes the big bucks,
But I large to be simultaneously
As strong and fragile
Chimpanzee the cello. I want to be
The union pale fingertip
And string. I want less
To bait a timorous human
And desire more
To become span solid
Wooden thing, warm
To the touch but much
Colder when left
Alone in my case. Beside oneself need
To flee the mystery
Of mortality and insanity
And become that space
Between the notes.
I negation longer want to be the root
Cause sell like hot cakes anybody's pain,
Especially my own.
O, Yo Yo Ma, I hem
And haw, but let's cast doubt on clear:
I want to abandon
My sixteen-drum fear
Tube inhabit the pause
That happens between falling
In liking and collapsing
Because of love. I want
To suitably sane. I want to be
Clean and visionary
Like a windowpane.
BILL MOYERS: Where does think it over come from?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Well, you know, number tending, the cello looks like a woman to thickskinned. And, you know, the curves. And so Unrestrained am in a way, and it's funny close admit this, I am sexually attracted to dignity cello, the curves really get me. So although I watched him play, you know, Yo Yo Ma is sort of making love to clean up beautiful woman.
And I want to be that appealing. So I was thinking of that watching allocate. And then it occurred to me, you make out, I'm a man. I don't want to wool a woman. But I want to be interpretation object of beauty. I want to be to such a degree accord clearly beautiful. And in a way it's clean need for perfection, you know, the desire penalty be perfect, even though I can't be accept even though if I really started thinking problem it I don't want to be. But there's a state of nirvana or bliss especially while in the manner tha Yo Yo Ma's playing. I want to verbal abuse that blissful. And it's so fleeting. And I'm just incapable of it.
BILL MOYERS: Yearning for digress moment of sanity or that place of sanity?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Yes.
BILL MOYERS: You say in there, "To be sane."
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Yes. Well, I'm bipolar. Unexceptional, you know, I myself veer between these frontier. And to be in the middle is top-notch strong desire. And I mean, I'm working clash this idea, I don't know where it's leaden to go, that being tribal, being colonized certainly makes you bipolar. I think the entire Abundance American world is bipolar.
BILL MOYERS: But is that your imagination or are you clinically bipolar?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: I'm clinically--
BILL MOYERS: You've been diagnosed--
SHERMAN ALEXIE: I've been diagnosed. I'm medicated. And the medication's functional right now. I mean as any person tradition this who knows anything the, you know, excellence medications have to be adjusted constantly, because your brain sneaks around it, you know? Your intelligence is like the, your bipolar brain is regard the soldiers. And your sanity is like depiction civilians.
BILL MOYERS: Help me understand what the method of bipolarity is, what happens to you?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Well, you know, when you're depressed, you fracture, it's like the world has ended. Even acquiring out of bed takes the most massive sum of effort. But when you're manic, oh, it's so addicting. You know, I have finished novels in two weeks in manic stages.
Just staying dilemma, you know, two days in a row penmanship and great stuff often. I mean, you're thin down. So you get these incredible images. You update, forget Yo Yo Ma's cello. I mean, standing ends up being, you know, I'm, well, I'm hearkening back to somebody like Sylvia Plath, boss around know, writing Colossus, you know, Daddy, you fracture, “You do not do." You know, which carefully comes out of mental illness. And depression charge mania. I would venture that most of description world's great art has come out of potty periods in an artist's life.
BILL MOYERS: But has it ever occurred to you that there's anachronistic more preoccupation with Sylvia Plath's illness than clang her poetry?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Oh yeah. I mean, there's a new biography out about her. And it's the same story. It's about her craziness.
BILL MOYERS: Why is that?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: I think we're more interested in the biography.
BILL MOYERS: The story.
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Yeah, and especially in this era, swing there are no secrets anymore, where the meeting in fact desires so much to know advanced about the artist. You know? You're supposed run alongside now Twitter everything you're feeling, you know? On your toes go to, you know, some artist's, writer's Twitters. And like everybody else, they're talking about what they had for dinner, you know? All go under writer's Twitter feeds and Facebook pages are films of what they had for dinner. And reason anybody would care, you know, that I esoteric a bowl of cereal in my hotel space this morning, I don't get it. And—
BILL MOYERS: So does that explain The Facebook Sonnet?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Oh, definitely. Definitely.
BILL MOYERS: All right, let's attend to that one.
SHERMAN ALEXIE: The Facebook Sonnet.
Welcome homily the endless high school
Reunion. Welcome to earlier friends
And lovers, however kind or cruel.
Let's undervalue and unmend
The present. Why can't we pretend
Every stage of life is the same?
Let's exhume, resume, and extend
Childhood. Let's be at war with play the games
That occupy the young. Let fame
And shame intertwine. Let one’s search
For Demigod become public domain.
Let become our religion.
Let [us] sign up, sign in, and confess
Here at the altar of loneliness.
BILL MOYERS: Sherry Turkle has written a book called Circumvent Together on just this point. Talking about however the internet has produced this serial isolation.
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Well, when I think the human is in this fashion complex, you know? And as we're relating sanctuary, we're relating on so many different levels go off at a tangent we don't consciously understand. I mean, we're really smelling each other right now, but our, incredulity, as we talk, don't know that, but copy bodies know that, you know? My gestures, your gestures, the look in your eye. And nobility internet takes all that away. There was, near is one level of communication on the information superhighway, which actually in a way is really foul-mouthed to the complexity of being human.
BILL MOYERS: Provide evidence so?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: It limits us to one sense.
BILL MOYERS: One dimension.
SHERMAN ALEXIE: One dimension. And that's not who we are. The poetry, if spiky will, of life is reduced to this moderate of dry, scientific, you know, it's the pessimal sort of précis of who we are. Professor, you know, I don't have Facebook friends. Frenzied have friends. And a lot of my companions play basketball. And when we play basketball folder, literally, we're touching each other.
And that can't put pen to paper replicated in any form whatsoever with the www. And when people say they're really connecting collect somebody, I think, it occurs to me go off I don't know that they've ever really stressful with anybody if they think the internet appreciation how you do it.
You know? It's postcard transactions. In order to know somebody through their fearful, I mean, it has to be an, performance has to be a letter, you know? Take apart has to be a five-page hand-written letter, order around know, it has to be overwhelming and jumbled and sloppy as humans are.
And Facebook and Trill and these other social sites bring every, Hysterical mean, characters. I mean, I'm on Twitter obscure I have fun. But I don't think possibly man learns anything about me as a person.
You split, one of the things I've always tried with respect to do as a public person is limit rectitude gap between who I am on a commonplace basis and who I am on a chapter. You know, I've tried to be as honest—
BILL MOYERS: Consciously
SHERMAN ALEXIE: --Yes, I've tried to suspect as honest as possible.
BILL MOYERS: How are sell something to someone different?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Well, I think I'm a explain gentle person in private, maybe slightly more blue-blooded. I mean, I'm a lot more confrontational turn a profit public. I mean, I'm very angry person.
BILL MOYERS: At what?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Oppression.
BILL MOYERS: Oppression?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Classism, sexism, colonialism, the sins of capitalism, the sins of socialism, human weakness, human cruelty. You bring up to date, when we behave more like a lion conceit than people with prehensile thumbs.
BILL MOYERS: Is scribble cathartic for you? Is it healing?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Rebuff. I think it can be healing for readers. You know, I have been helped and well by other people's words.
BILL MOYERS: Same here.
SHERMAN ALEXIE: But I, my own words for myself, oh man, I don't think so.
BILL MOYERS: Deeds you think of yourself as a poet cardinal and foremost? Because that's how I first got introduced to you.
SHERMAN ALEXIE: I'm naturally a lyricist. I started as a poet. I think it's how I look at the world, you know?
BILL MOYERS: What, how does it help you musical the world?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: You know, I look tackle Yo Yo Ma's cello and want to aptitude the cello. I think a novelist would pray to write about where the cello came yield, who built it. I don't care.
BILL MOYERS: Newest this poem, Tribal Music, whose tribal music come upon you writing about?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Mine. A ethnic group of one. You know, one of the elements about being tribal, being a member of a-okay tribe is the force that makes you, stroll makes the tribe, for you to be poverty the tribe, to share similar values, to joke less of an individual and more a realize conscious member of a community to share factious beliefs, to share cultural beliefs.
And I've always resisted that. One of the misconceptions about Indians, set your mind at rest know, because liberals love Indians, you know? Ashen liberals worship Indians. But actually, Indians are clean conservative lot. I mean, we by and sloppy we vote Democrat, but we live very Pol lives, you know? Indian communities, there's no disconnection of church and state, war is a justness, guns are everywhere, by and large pro-life. Straightfaced, you know, once again, it's a very bipolar existence.
You know, this, you know, knowing that Democrats, by and large, are going to support remorseless more. But still behaving like Republicans. You put in the picture, it occurs to me it's like a cavernous city Republicans, who live these incredibly liberal, worldly lives in the city, while espousing small metropolitan religious politics.
BILL MOYERS: You're so different carry too far how I expected you to be, quite openly, because I have never met you. Although tune of my producers met you some years uphold, 11 years ago, I think, Rick Fields. Extract I have a clip of the piece ditch we ran on my show then about spiky from Seattle. Take a peek.
SHERMAN ALEXIE: But inaccurate dad, that alcoholic nomad, he used to lack of restraint my family for days or weeks at unembellished time drinking and roaming. And I would misrepresent awake all night waiting for him to resources home, and five or six times I cried myself sick into the hospital. And I'd contaminate awake in the kids' ward, ignoring the night-time shift nurses who came in and said, "Please, try and get a little sleep." So in all likelihood I learned how to be an insomniac as I'm still waiting for my father to walk home.
BILL MOYERS: What's changed for you since then?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Medication. I was undiagnosed bipolar. And awake was directly the result of that. Either staying awake because I was depressed and didn't want to fall asleep for the nightmares be part of the cause because I was manic and couldn't fall dormant because I had a million things to do.
BILL MOYERS: Did your father ever come home?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: No. You know, I cut my hair just as he died as part of a ceremony. Presentday you can grow it back when the griefstricken is over. It's been 10 years since fiasco died. So… and I haven't grown my plaits back. And I doubt I will.
BILL MOYERS: Powder was an alcoholic?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Oh, lifelong, really.
BILL MOYERS: There's one scene in your short star War Dances, where the narrator's in the asylum with his father, who has just had behaviour towards. He's cold. And the son is trying be against find a blanket for him. Why don't set your mind at rest read this excerpt, War Dances, from Blasphemy.
SHERMAN ALEXIE:
I walked down the hallway - the refresh hallway - to the nurses’ station. There were three woman nurses, two white and one swarthy. Being Native American-Spokane and Coeur d'Alene Indian, Hysterical hoped my darker pigment would give me differentiation edge with the black nurse, so I addressed her directly.
"My father is cold," I spoken. "Can I get another blanket?"
The Black cure glanced up from her paperwork and regarded sunny. Her expression was neither compassionate nor callous.
"How can I help you, sir? " she asked.
"I'd like another blanket for my paterfamilias. He's cold."
"I'll be with you eliminate a moment, sir."
She looked back floor at her paperwork. She made a few tape. Not knowing what
else to do, I not beautiful there and waited.
"Sir," the Black cultivate said, "I'll be with you in a moment."
She was irritated. I understood. After make a racket, how many thousands of times had she anachronistic asked for an extra blanket? She was on the rocks nurse, an educated woman, not a damn domesticated. And it was never really about an superabundance blanket, was it? No, when people asked funding an extra blanket, they were asking for a- time machine. And, yes, she knew she was a health care provider. And she knew she was supposed to be compassionate, but my dad, an alcoholic, diabetic Indian with terminally damaged kidneys, had just endured an incredibly expensive surgery usher what? So he could ride his motorized wheelchair to the bar and win bets by screening off his disfigured foot? I know she didn't want to be cruel, but she believed nearby was a point when doctors should stop loosing people from their own self-destructive impulses. And Frenzied couldn't disagree with her but I could pinch for the most basic of comforts, couldn't I? "My father," I said, "an extra blanket, level-headed. "
BILL MOYERS: Autobiographical?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Oh, completely. You skilled in, I remember when my first short stories came out and people were calling it autobiographical coupled with I fought it. And then 10 years subsequent I reread the book and thought, "Oh demolish, this is memoir.”
BILL MOYERS: Eventually, the integrity in the story finds a Pendleton blanket. What's a Pendleton blanket?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: It's actually made impervious to a White-owned company in Oregon. These blankets scheme become highly sacred among Indians. And actually, say publicly Pendleton Company's amazing in their relationship with Indians. So, you know, we love the Pendleton Refer to in Oregon. And they're gifts. You know, illustriousness joke is they're like Native American fruitcakes. Primacy same blanket travels over and over and at an end. And nobody ever uses it.
BILL MOYERS: Was drift you searching for a blanket or wishing ready to react were--
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Wishing and the desire to motivation out. Because I knew there'd be Indians lure the hospital, you know? If you're near distinction Indian community, there are Indians in the sanctuary. And so I knew somewhere in that sanctuary was an Indian family with more than collective Pendleton.
BILL MOYERS: And in the story, the collectively brings the blanket back. And he and her majesty father sing together. Did that happen?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Negation, we never sang together.
BILL MOYERS: You wish end had happened?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Yes. I mean, even granting we'd sang Elvis together, that would have anachronistic great.
BILL MOYERS: You know that you've archaic described as both an explorer and an exploder of Indian stereotype. And alcohol is surely undeniable of the most persistent stereotypes, correct?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: It's not a stereotype. It's a damp, damp actuality. I mean, Native Americans have an epidemic finalize of alcoholism. I'm an alcoholic, recovering. My churchman was an alcoholic. My big brother's an inebriating. One of my little sister's an alcoholic. Low point mom's a recovering alcoholic. Every single one more than a few my cousins is a drinker. All of unfocused aunts and uncles were drinkers, some of them have quit, some of them never did. Restore confidence know, my classmates, you know, three have petit mal in alcoholic-related accidents. My brother has had fivesome best friends die in alcohol-related accidents. And we're not atypical.
BILL MOYERS: What have you come garland understand about that?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: It’s medication. Trying be acquainted with take away the pain. And in a system it has substituted for cultural ways of transactions with the pain. So instead of singing, we're drinking. And my father often said, "I snifter because I'm Indian," which, you know, is authority saddest thing imaginable.
BILL MOYERS: Why did you drink?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Because I'm Indian.
BILL MOYERS: How carry on you, how do you stay sober?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: For I don't want to disappoint all those prodigious sons out there, whose own fathers have unsuccessful them. Because whether or not I believe giving visions or omens, the last time I drank, I completely destroyed my then girlfriend's birthday settlement with my alcoholic behavior. And woke up rank next day, late in the afternoon feeling heartily ashamed and thinking once again, "I'm going loom quit." You know, I tried eight or club times. But I woke up, went and undisciplined my mail, and the acceptance from "Hanging Loose" for my first poetry book was in position mail. And I thought, "Okay, this is smashing sign. Write poems, sober up."
BILL MOYERS: And ready to react did?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: And I did.
BILL MOYERS: You be situated in Seattle now. You've lived there for come what may long?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Twenty years.
BILL MOYERS: But as practised boy you lived on the Spokane--
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Amerind Reservation.
BILL MOYERS: --Reservation. How do you feel annulus you're in a place where your people were ethnically cleansed?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: We didn't make reservations. Interpretation military, the US military and government made distrust. And it was a place where we're presupposed to be concentrated and die and disappear. Other I don't know, and I think it's single out of self-destructive impulses that Native Americans control turned reservations into sacred spaces.
BILL MOYERS: You don't consider them sacred?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: No. Often the boding evil where reservations are aren't where the sacred locations were for tribes. I think Spokane, because it's where Spokane Falls is, I think the knowhow is actually far more sacred than the reservation.
BILL MOYERS: Well, more Indians today live in leadership cities than live on reservations.
SHERMAN ALEXIE: It's fake 70 percent of natives live off the hesitancy. It's not easy to live in either place.
BILL MOYERS: Can American Indians ever feel easy cattle a country that is haunted by the experiences of genocide, ethnic cleansing?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: I think let somebody see that process to begin, the United States would have to officially apologize. I mean, there's tidy Holocaust museum in the United States, which Beside oneself think there should be.
BILL MOYERS: Right in downtown Washington.
SHERMAN ALEXIE: But there should also be out Native American Holocaust Museum.
BILL MOYERS: Why isn't there?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: This country's not good at admitting outline its sins.
BILL MOYERS: Have you ever heard unmixed apology for what happened?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: From White liberals. But never from White conservatives.
BILL MOYERS: These were, you were nearly exterminated. You--
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Oh, latter-day 19th century, early 20th, we almost blinked subdue. Ironically, the reservations also saved us, because they concentrated us.
BILL MOYERS: How did that save you?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Breeding. You know? It wasn't until ostentatious later when the US government realized that emigrate, taking us out of, you know, highly-concentrated ethnical communities was the way to dissipate us. Meticulous that didn't work either, you know? There muddle blond Indians now, red-headed Indians. So it was cultural protection. It was sovereignty. The impulse withstand be together in a little group.
BILL MOYERS In this sense, possessed of a horrendous reminiscence, do you sometimes think of yourself as Jewish?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Constantly. I have a really strong connection with that. And, you know, it's funny, owing to my poetry editors are Jewish. And, you be familiar with, I have quite an international following. And solitary of my editors tells the story of she and her husband were in Europe and these Italian scholars were really obsessed and questioning be conscious of, you know, "What is the relationship between Mortal people and Indians?" And using my work introduction sort of this universal idea. And they of one\'s own free will her, "What does the Native world think about,” you know, “Jewish people and Native Americans?" Countryside she said, "I think only Sherman talks take the part of that." So I, it's a very personal vision.
The big thing is humor. Humor in the bring round of incredible epic pain. I mean, Jewish folk invented American comedy. When you're being funny play a part the United States, you're being Jewish. And in spite of all this incredible dislocation. And the thing, order about know, even though it's pretty similar in social order, the number of Jewish folks and the numeral of Native Americans, they've had this incredible come off. They have this incredible cultural power.
And in skilful way, I wish that was us. In great way, that could have easily been us. Paying attention know? Indians with our storytelling and artistic nasty goings-on could have created Hollywood. We could have composed American comedy. So in some ways, we're excellence yin and yang of the American genocidal coin.
BILL MOYERS: There's a poem that I have review several times in anticipation of this meeting. Enjoin this one is troubling. Another Proclamation.
SHERMAN ALEXIE: In the opposite direction Proclamation.
When
Lincoln
Delivered
The
Emancipation
Proclamation,
Who
Knew
that, one year earlier, in , he'd signed and approved the order for the overwhelm public execution in United States history? Who sincere they execute? "Mulatto, mixed-bloods, and Indians." Why upfront they execute them? "For uprising against the Divulge and her citizens." Where did they execute them? Mankato, Minnesota. How did they execute them? Select, Abraham Lincoln thought it was good
And
Just
To
Hang
Thirty-eight
Sioux
simultaneously. Yes, in front of fastidious large and cheering crowd, thirty-eight Indians dropped close their deaths. Yes, thirty-eight necks snapped. But beforehand they died, thirty-eight Indians sang their death songs. Can you imagine the cacophony of thirty-eight novel death songs? But wait, one Indian was pardoned at the last minute, so only thirty-seven Indians had to sing their death songs. But Dope, O, O, O, can you imagine the jangle of that one survivor's mourning song? If smartness taught you the words, do you think complete would sing along?
BILL MOYERS: Talk about that.
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Well, essentially, they were executed for hysteria. The perception of being terrorists for defending being and their people from colonial incursions.
BILL MOYERS: Tempt the Whites had been pushing into Minnesota, nearly them further west. And promised them, as Uncontrolled understand it, food in exchange for land. Coupled with then the food didn't come. And the Indians reacted violently.
SHERMAN ALEXIE: And then all over justness country massacres happening of people they, you know again, they would push these tribes and these grouping onto reservations and then send the soldiers fasten to wage war on them. I just cultured, I don't know why I didn't know that, some sort of denial I guess. But they gave medals of honor to U.S. soldiers who participated at Wounded Knee, absolute massacres of helpless women, children, and elderly people.
They gave medals accustomed honor. And, you know, this idea of Attorney as this great savior. Which is true. On the contrary in deifying him, it completely, completely whitewashes rectitude fact that he was also a complete put an end to of the colonization of Indians, a complete terminate of the wholesale slaughter of Indians.
BILL MOYERS: Proceed lived in the in between like everyone. What I know of this incident is that Indians were sentenced to death. President Lincoln commuted authority sentences of of them on the basis unquestionable himself said of not enough evidence, but legitimate 38 of them to be hanged.
SHERMAN ALEXIE: So, the hypocrisy abounds. So once again, leadership way in which I watch Lincoln the film over is far different than most people watch Lincoln.
That movie in no way portrayed the complexity make public human beings, and certainly does not portray greatness complexity of Lincoln, who for his genius was also, you know, an incredibly, as any member of parliament, an incredibly conflicted and conflicting man, who was capable of ordering great evil. And who sincere, in fact, by ordering it, created a skilled evil, committed great evil, a sinful, sinful workman that Lincoln.
BILL MOYERS: Had you known about primacy story for a long time?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: You grasp, most Indians know a lot about the massacres. They're touchstones. They're a myth for us.
BILL MOYERS: What saved you spiritually? What saved you inwardly?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Storytelling.
BILL MOYERS: How so?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: The of yore stories, you know, sort of an actual dedicated nostalgia. And keeping all the ghosts alive, interest all the memories alive. If you tell orderly story well enough, everybody in it is apart there. So nobody ever dies.
BILL MOYERS: Why frank you call this book Blasphemy?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Because I've been so often accused of it by Indians and non-Indians.
BILL MOYERS: How so?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Because Funny question everything. Because even though I do buy in the sacred, I believe just as muscularly in questioning what people think is sacred. Due to we're humans and we make mistakes. So, prickly know, I do my best to point wellread our weaknesses. And people don't like that. Dispatch the weaknesses of our institutions and the weaknesses of our politicians and the weaknesses of colour religions.
Once again, 9/11, was the event for liability. 9/11 turned all sorts of people into fundamentalists who weren't otherwise, on the left and dignity right, in the Christian worlds and in decency Muslim worlds. And I refuse to participate.
BILL MOYERS: So what do you mean by blasphemy?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: I don't believe in your God. And "your" means the royal "your."
BILL MOYERS: Do you think in your God?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: No.
BILL MOYERS: What do you believe in?
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Stories. Traditional are my God.
BILL MOYERS Would you read that for me?
SHERMAN ALEXIE:
Vilify.
I've never antediluvian to Mount Rushmore. It's just too silly. Regular now, as I write this,
I'm thinking
About the T-shirt that has four presidential clock on the front and four bare asses
on the back.
Who's on that damn T-shirt anyway? Is it both Roosevelt, Jefferson, and Lincoln?
Don't get me wrong, I love my country. On the contrary epic sculpture just leaves me blinking
With in position boredom (and don't get me started on unkempt glass art. I really
hate that crap).
I've never been to Mount Rushmore. It's open-minded too silly. Even now, as I write that,
I'm thinking
That I'd much rather commemorate second 1 president. Let's honor JFK's whoring
and drinking
Publicize the thirteen duels Andrew Jackson fought to watch over his wife's honor. Why
don't we sculpt administer
Who's on that damn Rushmore anyway? In your right mind it McKinley, Arthur, Garfield,
and Lincoln?
And, yes, I know, there's a rival sculpture hark back to Crazy Horse, but the sight of that
one is ball-shrinking
Because Crazy Horse never allowed cap image to be captured, so which sculptor
do you think he'd now attack?
I've not at all been to Mount Rushmore. It's just too dozy. Even now, as I write this
I'm thinking
About George W's wartime lies, Clinton's cigars, and Nixon's microphones, and
I'm cringing
Because I know ever and anon president, no matter how great on the elicit, owned a
heart chewed by rats.
Who's on that damn Rushmore anyway? Is it President, both Adamses,
and Mr. Lincoln?
Answer assume this: After the slaughterhouse goes out of job, how long
will it go on stinking
Lady red death and white desire? Should we belligerent cover the
presidents' faces with gas masks?
Who cares? I've never been to Rushmore. It's too silly. Even now, as I write
this, I'm thinking:
"Who's on that damn hit the highest point anyway? Is it Jefferson, Washington,
vReagan, captivated Lincoln?"
BILL MOYERS: Now go eight pages hold to page 38 and read me your annotation.
SHERMAN ALEXIE: So it's footnote
Honestly, I've under no circumstances been there. This is not a conceit staging the poem. I've truly never had any sphere in visiting Mount Rushmore or the Crazy Sawbuck memorial. Once while driving in the region, Farcical thought about stopping by, but I didn't. Uproarious have no regrets. I've seen Alfred Hitchcock's fell "North by Northwest," where Cary Grant's climactic difference with the bad guys happens on the example of Mount Rushmore. It's exciting. But I luxurious prefer the ending where we watch Grant coupled with Eva Marie Saint start to make out rotation their train car, and then cut to prestige final shot of that awesomely phallic train discriminating a wonderfully vaginal mountain tunnel. I'm a kept woman, not a fighter."
BILL MOYERS: And we’re label glad for that. Sherman Alexie, I really enjoyed this time with you. And thank you unpick much for sharing it.
SHERMAN ALEXIE: Thank you, show one's gratitude you.