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Spokane means "children of the sun." The Spokane Tribe's reservation, bounded in the south by the Spokane River and in the west by the Columbia River, consists of 154,000 acres in eastern Washington on the Columbia River Plateau. All but 10 percent of the acreage is held in trust by the federal government. The reservation exists in the original area inhabited by the Spokane, which sprawled across three million acres. The Spokane Tribe of Indians' ancestors were the Spokan, a plateau people that shared numerous cultural traits with their neighbors. The Spokanes' original tongue is a member of the Salish language family, and they are often categorized as a Salishan tribe. For unrecorded millennia, the Spokane tribe lived in the area around the Spokane River, leading a seasonal way of life consisting of fishing, hunting and gathering endeavors. The Spokane people shared their territory and language with several other tribes, including the Colville, Flathead, and Kalispel tribes. The Spokane consisted of three bands that lived along the Spokane River. The Spokane Falls were the tribe's center of trade and fishing. The typical Spokane kinship unit was the nuclear family, plus the father's and mother's nearest relatives. The acceptable, but uncommon practice of polygamy was a potential family feature. The spiritual life of the Spokane was closely interwoven with the land and living things. The beliefs of all Plateau Indians held many commonalities with religions of other North American Indians. The Spokane believed in a Great Spirit. There also were such atmospheric spirits as the wind and thunder, and numerous supportive animal spirits that people sought for personal guardians. Firstling rites were celebrated for the first-caught salmon, or the first berries, roots and fruits harvested during the summer season. By the 13th century, the Spokane had developed permanent winter villages typically situated on rivers, especially along rapids and other places where fish were plentiful. Those dwellings were elongated and semi-subterranean. To hunt and gather roots and berries in the summer, they lived in camps on mountain valley meadows. Those shelters were cone-shaped huts covered with mats. From the 13th to 17th centuries, gradual changes to the Spokane culture appear to have arrived from the west. The Plateau peoples became influenced by the rich and intricate Northwest Coast culture of Washington's and Oregon's Pacific coasts. A few of the influences included plank houses, and wood and bone carvings depicting animals. At the turn of the 18th century, other influences on the Spokane came from Plains Indians residing east of the Rockies - the major one being the horse (introduced to the continent by European explorers). The Spokane probably started using horses in 1730 when they were brought into the Palouse region of present-day eastern Washington. Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries entered the region to convert the Native Americans and improve their lot. Missionaries usually meant well, but they deliberately sought to extinguish the natives' religion as well as many of their customs. Early in the 19th century, Indian and white fur trappers out of the east came into the northern Columbia Plateau forests. They were friendly with the native people they encountered. They often lived with them, took on their customs, and intermarriage was not uncommon. In 1810, the Spokane commenced major trading with white men. The Northwest Company's Spokane House was established on their lands; it was moved to Fort Colville in 1826. However, smallpox, syphilis, influenza and other diseases, unwittingly introduced by the white man, proved to be disastrous to native peoples, including the Spokane. Entire villages were wiped out. Following the 1849 Gold Rush in California, prospectors looked for gold elsewhere in the West. Gold seekers arrived in Washington territory in the 1850s and '60s. They were frequently unruly, caring little about Indians and their rights. If a white man was killed, U.S. soldiers would get involved - regardless of what he had done. Indian wars in the inland Northwest erupted as a result. Native veterans of the wars were assumed to be murderers and were killed. From 1860 onward, the Spokane shared the fate of numerous other tribes in the Northwest and elsewhere. Land-hungry homesteaders poured into the Plateau region and forced off the original inhabitants. Indians from disparate tribes were concentrated onto reservations, which compromised their tribal identity. The Prophet Dance of the 19th century seems to have been a reaction against the increasing compromise of ancestral culture by the new influences. Natural resources that Native Americans had depended upon were exploited to the point of destruction. Off-reservation burial grounds and ancient villages were often disrupted and destroyed by earthmoving and house construction. The Indian agent (federal reservation supervisor), imposed regulations and restrictions on his native charges. There was an open effort to suppress the Indians' language and culture; for example, they were assigned English names. Indians endured the prejudice of the dominant white society. Alcoholism and other diseases exacted an awful toll. In the latter part of the 19th century, there occurred two major agreements between the Spokane and the federal government: In August 1877, the Lower Spokane agreed to relocate to what would be the Spokane Reservation by November 1. In January 1881, President Hayes formally declared the territory a reservation by executive order. Then in March 1887, the Upper and Middle Spokane agreed to move to the Colville, Flathead or Coeur d'Alene reservation. In 1906, 651 members of the Spokane tribe were allotted 64,750 acres to be divided into individual plots. Following the construction of Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River in central Washington (1939), salmon were prevented from migrating, thus disrupting the Spokane fishery. In addition, the waters behind the dam rose nearly 400 feet, which flooded numerous tribal lands and cultural sites. The tribe struggled for years to win compensation from the federal government, which culminated in H.R. 1753, submitted by U.S. Rep. George R. Nethercutt Jr. and two co-sponsors in April 2003. The bill would

"...provide for equitable compensation of the Spokane Tribe of Indians of the Spokane Reservation in settlement of claims of the Tribe concerning the contribution [sacrifice made] of the Tribe to the production of hydropower by the Grand Coulee Dam, and for other purposes."

In October 2003, the bill was scheduled for subcommittee hearings. In August 1951, the tribe filed significant claims: The first concerned land ceded to the federal government in the mid-19th century; the tribe argued that the amount of monetary compensation the federal government offered then had been negligently paltry. The other was that the government had mismanaged some of the tribe's funds and properties held in trust. The foregoing were combined, and the Indian Claims Commission sanctioned a settlement of $6.7 million. The tribe accepted the offer in December 1966. Half of the funds were distributed among 1,600 members; minors' shares were placed in trust. The other half was disbursed for various tribal programs. The tribe filed another claim in the Court of Claims for the mismanagement of commission judgment funds as well as other monies. The tribe was compensated in the amount of $271,431 in 1981. See Indian Wars Time Table.
See also Native American Cultural Regions map.

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Spokane means "children of the sun." The Spokane Tribe's reservation, bounded in the south by the Spokane River and in the west by the Columbia River, consists of 154,000 acres in eastern Washington on the Columbia River Plateau. All but 10 percent of the acreage is held in trust by the federal government.

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Scalp Dance by Spokane Native Indians

This article contains interesting facts, pictures and information about the life of the Spokane Native American Indian Tribe of the Columbia River Plateau region.

The Spokane Tribe
Summary and Definition: The semi-nomadic Spokane tribe were fishers, hunter-gatherers and traders of the Plateau cultural group who mainly lived by the Spokane River and in the west by the Columbia River on the Columbia River Plateau. The picture, by artist Paul Kane, was painted in 1847 and depicts the Scalp Dance by Spokane Native Indians.

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Facts about the Spokane Native Indian Tribe
This article contains fast, fun facts and interesting information about the Spokane Native American Indian tribe. Find answers to questions like where did the Spokane tribe live, what clothes did they wear, what did they eat and who were the names of their most famous leaders? Discover what happened to the tribe with facts about their wars and history.

What language did the Spokane tribe speak?
The Spokane tribe spoke in a Salishan dialect similar, the language use by the Northwest Pacific coastal tribes. The meaning of their name was "children of the sun". The tribe consisted of three bands known as the Upper, Middle and Lower Spokane Indians.

What was the lifestyle and culture of the Spokane tribe?
The Spokane were influenced by the coastal tribes and many built villages of plank houses. Others built pit houses as their winter shelters. Their summer shelters suited their nomadic style and they lived in Tule-mat lodges that were fast to erect and easy to dismantle. After the introduction of the horse in the 1750's the Spokane people of the Plateau region traveled to the Great Plains to hunt buffalo and adopted the some of the lifestyle elements of this cultural group, including the tepee and similar clothing made from buffalo hides.

Who were the allies and enemies of the Spokane tribe?
The allies of the Spokane tribe were many of the other Native American Indians who inhabited the Plateau region including the Cayuse, Walla Walla, Coeur D'Alene, Palouse and the Nez Perce. The main enemies of the Spokane tribe were the Great Basin groups to the south, including the Shoshone, Blackfeet, Northern Paiute, and the Bannock tribes.

Where did the Spokane tribe live?
The Spokane are people of the Plateau Native American cultural group. The location of their tribal homelands are shown on the map although the core of Spokane territory was in modern day Washington, the tribe controlled additional territory in Idaho and Montana The geography of the region in which they lived dictated the lifestyle and culture of the tribe.

The tribe lived along the banks of the Spokane River, and in the west by the Columbia River

Land: Fast flowing rivers, lakes, forests and prairies

Climate: Warm summers and cold, snowy winters

Animals: The animals included elk, deer, mountain goat, groundhog, coyote, raccoon, bear, fox, porcupine, weasel, beaver and hare

Fish: Salmon, steelhead trout

Natural Resources: Berries, bulbs, roots and seeds

The Scalp Dance by Spokane Indians: 1847 Painting by Paul Kane

Spokane Women Scalp Dance Attendants

The picture of the Spokane scalp dance was performed in a Spokane village near Kettle Falls on the Columbia River. It depicts the central figure of a Spokane woman, whose husband had been killed by a Blackfoot Native Indian. The stick she waves has a Blackfoot scalp on top of it. The woman whirled around a fire flailing the scalp and kicking in revenge. Behind her, eight attendant painted women danced and chanted, as did the rest of the tribe, to the beat of drums. The painted faces of the Spokane women are taken from the Scalp Dance picture. The white paint worn by the women symbolized mourning and the black paint, a very aggressive color, symbolized strength, and in this instance, also symbolized power, revenge and striking terror in any onlookers or captives. Chalk deposits were plentiful and charcoal was easy to make resulting in distinctive white and black face painting.

The Spokane tribe and the Lewis and Clark Expedition
Lewis and Clark encountered the Spokane tribe in October 1805. The tribe heard about the Lewis and Clark expedition and sent two runners to meet them as the Corps of Discovery approached the Columbia River. Additional encounters with the Spokane were made at the Long Narrows of the Columbia at their ancient Wishram village and witnessed the tribe trading and enjoying leisure activities such as wrestling and horse riding.

What transportation did the Spokane use? Dugout Canoes
The Spokane tribe of the Plateau region built dugout canoes made from the hollowed-out logs of large trees. The men hollowed logs with controlled fire that softened the timber so they could carve and shape their canoe to have a flat bottom with straight sides. The canoe was perfect means of transportation for travel along fast streams and shallow waters of the Columbia River.

What food did the Spokane tribe eat?
The food of the Spokane tribe included salmon and trout and a variety of meats from the animals and birds they hunted. They supplemented their protein diet with roots, seeds, nuts and fruits.

What weapons did the Spokane use?
The weapons used were spears, lances, clubs, knives and bows and arrows. The Spokane also used shields for defensive purposes.

What clothes did the Spokane wear?
The clothes worn by the men the men and women of the tribe were similar to the clothing of the Nez Perce - please refer to this article for details.

What happened to the Spokane tribe? History Timeline
The following Spokane history timeline details facts, dates and famous landmarks and battles fought by the Spokane Nation. The history timeline explains what happened to the people of their tribe.
Spokane History Timeline

1750's: The Spokane acquire the horse and their lifestyle changed as they were able to travel to the Great Plains to hunt buffalo

1800: Two French-Canadian fur trappers, Le Blanc and Le Gasse, were the first white men to make contact with the tribe. They were sent by explorer and trapper David Thompson to spend a winter with the Native indians

1805: The Lewis and Clark expedition met the tribe on their travels along the Columbia river.

1812: A trading post known as Spokane House was built near the confluence of Spokane and Little Spokane Rivers

1825: The Hudson's Bay Company established Fort Vancouver as a trading post

1825: The sons of Spokane Indian leaders are sent to the Red River mission school by the Hudson's Bay Company.

1836: A missionary called Samuel Jackson made contact with the tribe

1830: The Indian Removal Act was passed by Congress

1843: The first major migration along the Oregon Trail took place which eventually led to violent conflicts with the white settlers who traveled in wagon trains along the Oregon trail

1845: The white settlers brought various diseases to the Native Indians who lived in the surrounding areas of the Oregon Trail

1847: Many of the Spokane tribe are wiped out by a devastating series of measles and smallpox epidemics

1855: The Yakima treaty was signed on 9 July 1855 and ceded more than 10 million acres to the United States government in exchange for over 1 million acres of reservation lands

1855: The Yakima War (1855-1858) erupted, fought by members of the Native Indian alliance including the Spokane, Cayuse, Walla Walla, Umatilla, and Nez Perce tribes.

1857: The Fraser Canyon gold Rush began in 1857 after gold was discovered on the Thompson River in British Columbia at its confluence with the Nicoamen River. White prospectors rushed to the area

1858: The Coeur d'Alene War (aka Spokane, Coeur d'Alene and Palouse Indian war) was fought in the Washington and Idaho areas. The alliance of Native Indian tribes attacked and defeated a force of 164 US troops under Major Edward Steptoe

1858: Colonel Wright ordered the destruction of 700 Palouse horses at "Horse Slaughter Camp," hanged several Palouse Indians. This concluded the Coeur d'Alene and the Yakima Wars

1859: The treaties with the tribes were broken, the US gave only half of what was promised

1881: The Lower Spokane moved onto the newly formed Spokane Reservation.

1887: Dawes General Allotment Act passed by Congress led to the break up of the large Indian Reservations and the sale of Indian lands to white settlers

Spokane History Timeline
Spokane

Interesting Facts and information about the way the people lived

The clothes worn by men and women

Description of the homes and the type of food the Spokane would eat

Fast Facts and info about the Spokane

Interesting Homework resource for kids on the history of the Spokane Native American Indians

Pictures and Videos of Native American Indians and their Tribes
The Spokane Tribe was one of the most famous tribes of Native American Indians. Discover the vast selection of pictures on the subject of the tribes of Famous Native Americans such as the Spokane nation. The pictures show the clothing, war paint, weapons and decorations of various Native Indian tribes, such as the Spokane tribe, that can be used as a really useful educational resource for kids and children of all ages.. We hope you enjoy watching the video - just click and play - a great social studies homework resource for kids .

Spokane tribe - Kids - Cool, Fun Facts - Lives - Location - Spokane History - Clothes - Clothing - Food - Tribe - Kids - Info - Information - Kids - Children - Spokane Teaching resource - Social Studies - Lifestyle - Culture - Teachers - Spokane Native Indians - Kids - Interesting Facts - Spokane Clothes - Spokane Clothing - Spokane Food - Info - Information - Pictures - Reference - Guide - Studies - Homework - Spokane Facts

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Scalp Dance by Spokane Native Indians This article contains interesting facts, pictures and information about the life of the Spokane Native American Indian Tribe of the Columbia River Plateau region. The Spokane Tribe Summary and Definition: The semi-nomadic Spokane tribe were fishers, hunter-gatherers and traders of the Plateau cultural group who mainly lived by the Spokane River and in the west by the Columbia River on the Columbia River Plateau.

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Spokane Tribe of Indians - Improving the lives of our Members

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Sherman Alexie is the author of, most recently, Blasphemy, stories, from Grove Press, and Face, poetry, from Hanging Loose Press. He is the winner of the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award, the 2007 National Book Award for Young People's Literature, the 2001 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, and a Special Citation for the 1994 PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Fiction. Smoke Signals, the film he wrote and coproduced, won both the Audience Award and the Filmmakers Trophy at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. Alexie lives with his family in Seattle.

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Sherman Alexie is the author of, most recently, Blasphemy, stories, from Grove Press, and Face, poetry, from Hanging Loose Press. He is the winner of the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award, the 2007 National Book Award for Young People's Literature, the 2001 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, and a Special Citation for the 1994 PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Fiction.

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Alexie is a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian born and raised in the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington. His father held various jobs, including truck driver and logger and his mother was a social worker. Alexie was born hydrocephalic and underwent a brain operation at the age of 6 months, but was not expected to survive. When he did live, doctors predicted he would live with severe mental retardation. Although spared this, he did suffer through seizures and bed-wetting throughout his childhood. Preferring to stay inside, he developed a love for reading, liking Steinbeck as a five-year-old. Alexie faced alcoholism for five years before becoming sober at 23. He graduated with honors from Reardan High, where he was the only Indian. Alexie planned to be a doctor until he "fainted three times in human anatomy class" and stumbled into a poetry workshop at Washington State University. He attened Gonzaga University in Spokane on a scholarship and graduated in American Studies from Washington State. Alexie received two prestigious fellowships and soon after cranked out eleven books, placing the number of his total pieces of work at over 300.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Rani Gupta <whatitmeans@hotmail.com>

Spouse

Diane Tomhave (? - present) (2 children)

Prefers the term "Indian," to "Native American"

His short story, The Toughest Indian in the World, appeared in The New Yorker Magazine's "The Future of American Fiction" issue (June 21 & 28, 1999)

Won the 2007 National Book Award for Young People's Literature for his first young adult novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

[when asked if he thought that his portraying Indians as likely to have alcohol problems in his book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian played into stereotypes about Indians] Stereotypes? It's not a stereotype. Stereotype implies that it's not real, and it's absolutely real. On my reservation, in my family, alcoholism was epidemic. When you're talking about aunts, uncles, cousins; there are three of us, currently, who don't drink actively, out of hundreds of people. So anybody who thinks it's a stereotype, alcoholism among Native Americans, is a romantic fool.

[in his book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian] Gordie, the white boy genius, gave me this book by a Russian dude named Tolstoy, who wrote, 'Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.' Well, I hate to argue with a Russian genius, but Tolstoy didn't know Indians, and he didn't know that all Indian families are unhappy for the same exact reasons: the frikkin' booze.

I've spent very little time on my reservation in the last twenty years. Personally,there's too much pain.I actually think I'm more traditional as a writing nomad than people who never leave the reservation.

When you're colonized, you end up exploiting your own spirituality. You're subject to so many negative stereotypes, you embrace the positive ones. Non-Indians love us in that way. They think we're all priests and healers. After generations of being reviled and dehumanized, to be thought of as magical is pretty seductive.

Every reading I do, there's always some big Indian guy in the back row staring daggers at me. One guy in Montana said, 'You're a genius. You figured out what white people wanted, and you wrote it'. Yeah, that's exactly what I thought back in 1987. What's going to make me really economically successful? Poems about Indian guys. I'm a capitalistic genius.

I don't believe in magic, but I do believe in interpreting coincidence exactly the way you want. I woke up after a tremendous bender, and the acceptance for my first book of poems was in the mailbox. For me, it was a call to get sober.

When an Indian tribe gets a casino, they've officially declared that they've lost the war. It's the final submission.

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Alexie is a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian born and raised in the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington. His father held various jobs, including truck driver and logger and his mother was a social worker. Alexie was born hydrocephalic and underwent a brain operation at the age of 6 months, but was not expected to survive.

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Sherman Alexie is a preeminent Native American poet, novelist, performer and filmmaker. He has garnered high praise for his poems and short stories of contemporary Native American reservation life, among them The Business of Fancydancing (1992), The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven (1993), which won a PEN/Hemingway Award, and Smoke Signals (1998), a critically acclaimed movie based on one of Alexie's short stories and for which he co-wrote the screenplay. An acclaimed performer of his own work, Alexie held the World Heavyweight Poetry title for four years. He continues to perform many of his poems at poetry slams, festivals, and other venues, and has received praise for the energy and emotion he brings to his work.

A Spokane/Coeur d'Alene tribal member, Alexie grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington. Alexie was born hydrocephalic and underwent an operation at six months of age; he was not expected to survive. Though he lived through the experience, he was plagued with seizures as a child and spent most of his childhood reading. In the eighth grade, he decided to attend Reardan High School, located twenty miles outside the reservation. His achievements in high school secured his admission to Spokane's Jesuit Gonzaga University in 1985, where he had a successful academic career but began to abuse alcohol. Alexie transferred to Washington State University in 1987 and began writing poetry and short fiction. In 1990 Alexie's work was published in Hanging Loose magazine, a success he has credited with giving him the incentive to quit drinking. He has remained sober ever since.

In his short-story and poetry collections, Alexie illuminates the despair, poverty, and alcoholism that often shape the lives of Native Americans living on reservations. His poems, novels and short stories evoke sadness and indignation yet also leave readers with a sense of respect and compassion for characters who are in seemingly hopeless situations. Involved with crime, alcohol, or drugs, Alexie's protagonists struggle to survive the constant battering of their minds, bodies, and spirits by white American society and their own self-hatred and sense of powerlessness. As Alexie asserted in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Native Americans "have a way of surviving. But it's almost like Indians can easily survive the big stuff. Mass murder, loss of language and land rights. It's the small things that hurt the most. The white waitress who wouldn't take an order, Tonto, the Washington Redskins." While he depicts the lives of Native Americans who attempt to escape their situation through alcohol and other forms of self-abuse, Alexie's characters also access a mental, emotional, and spiritual outlet, which he refers to as "fancydancing."

A key characteristic of Alexie's writing is irony, and his dark humor is often buoyed by an exquisite sense of timing. His poetry collections The Business of Fancydancing and First Indian on the Moon (1993) expose the "fraudulent illusions that tempt us all in America today," noted Andrea-Bess Baxter in Western American Literature. Commenting on The Business of Fancydancing, Alexie's first published poetry collection, Leslie Ullman in the Kenyon Review wrote that the author "weaves a curiously soft-blended tapestry of humor, humility, pride and metaphysical provocation out of the hard realities...the tin-shack lives, the alcohol dreams, the bad luck and burlesque disasters, and the self-destructive courage of his characters." Such irony is also a major force in Alexie's prose, particularly his early short story collections, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist-Fight in Heaven and The Toughest Indian in the World (2000), which Ken Foster for the San Francisco Chronicle described as having a "consistently dark comic tone." In an interview Alexie commented on his progression from poems to short stories to novels as occurring "pretty naturally because...my poems are stories. It felt natural for me to evolve to a larger form. Not to say it wasn't difficult for me at first, though...I had this thing about going beyond one page, typewritten. I'd get to the bottom of a page and freak out, because I wouldn't know what to do next. But the stories kept getting bigger and bigger...They began to demand more space than a poem could provide."

Alexie was named to Granta's Best of Young American Novelists list in 1996. Editor Ian Jack said the judges had "liked his [Alexie's] work because it had something to tell us. Native American life, life on the reservation, is a pretty under-described experience." He added that "fiction, if it's any good, should persuade you of individual and inner lives. Alexie's book wasn't sanctimonious or pious or a piece of political pleading-it introduced you to characters who were native American and made them as complex and odd as everyone else." Alexie's early work was often described in such terms. Verlyn Klinkenborg noted in the Los Angeles Times Book Review that Alexie writes effectively for "a divided audience, Native American and Anglo. He is willing to risk didacticism whenever he stops to explain the particulars of the Spokane, and, more broadly, the Native American experience to his readers. But Alexie never sounds didactic. His timing is too good for that"; Abigail Davis in Bloomsbury Review declared that "this first novel by Sherman Alexie comes as close to helping a non-Native American understand the modern Indian experience as any attempt in current literature. The reader closes the book feeling troubled, hurt, hopeful, profoundly thoughtful, and somehow exhausted, as if the quest of the characters had been a personal experience."

But as Alexie's prose writing has matured, it has become less focused on exposing a uniquely Native American world to Anglo audiences. Ken Foster, in his review of The Toughest Indian in the World for the San Francisco Chronicle, described how the nine stories in the collection retrace Alexie's familiar territory of Native-white conflict without feeling "the need to instruct his readers in the details of contemporary American Indian culture, and why should he? The lives he portrays are so finely detailed." Eric Weinberger, in his review of Alexie's short story collection Ten Little Indians (2003), likewise noted that the "the most successful stories in Ten Little Indians don't traffic in their Indianness." Alexie's 2007 novel Flightalso treads his familiar themes in new ways. In the story of 15-year-old foster kid "Zits," his adventures through time, and his reincarnation as various historical characters, Alexie "skillfully explores both sides of the proverbial war. Zits witnesses brutal violence through the eyes of whites and Indians, fathers and sons, and he begins to understand what it means to be the hero, the villain and the victim," wrote S. Kirk Walsh in his review for the New York Times. Released the same year, Alexie's semi-autobiographical young adult novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian received major critical praise and won a host of awards, including the National Book Award for Young People's Literature.

Alexie has also been active in film, helping to create the first all-Indian movie. Smoke Signals (1998) which was a major studio release, writing and directing the adaption of his own book The Business of Fancy-Dancing (2003), and writing the script for the independent film 49? (2003). Based on an Alexie short story, Smoke Signals was produced, directed, and acted by Native American talent. The plot follows a young man living an aimless life in Idaho. Victor Joseph, who has lost contact with his Native roots, embarks on a journey to "discover his past and accept his present," as Los Angeles Magazine writer James Greenberg put it. The finished film took top honors at the Sundance Film Festival; on the occasion of its 1998 wide release, Alexie told a Time interviewer that he hoped Smoke Signals would open doors for Indian filmmakers. He pointed to African-American director Spike Lee as a role model: "Spike didn't necessarily get films made as much as he inspired filmmakers to believe in themselves. That's what's going to happen here. These 13-year-old Indian kids who've been going crazy with their camcorders will finally see the possibilities."

While he explores many of the same themes in all his chosen genres, Alexie's poetry is arguably even more self-conscious and ironic than his prose. A mix of narrative, formal innovation and gorgeous lyricism, his poetry collections often contain extended prose pieces, as in The Business of Fancy-Dancing, First Indian on the Moon (1993), and One Stick Song (2000), which Publisher's Weekly praised for its "ability to handle multiple perspectives and complex psychological subject matter with a humor that feeds readability." His collection Face (2009) includes poems written in forms like the sestina and villanelle, as well meta-textual effects like extended footnotes and frame-breaking moments of self-awareness. The effect, according to Stephen Ross in the Oxonian Review, is "light-hearted without being light, colloquial without being cliché, and serious without being sententious."

Alexie has been the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including the 2009 Mason Award, the 2008 Stranger Genius Award, a Pushcart Prize, the PEN/Malamud Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship, and numerous honorary degrees. He is a highly sought-after public speaker and has been a guest on nationally-broadcast radio and TV programs like the McNeil-Lehrer Report, NOW with Bill Moyers, and the Colbert Report. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his wife and two sons.

[Updated 2010]

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Sherman Alexie is a preeminent Native American poet, novelist, performer and filmmaker. He has garnered high praise for his poems and short stories of contemporary Native American reservation life, among them The Business of Fancydancing (1992), The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven...