Its creation in 1881 divided the larger Spokane Indian territory and separated the three bands of the tribe’s configuration-the Upper, Middle, and Lower Spokane Indians-along the Spokane River. The Spokane Reservation of Alexie’s youth is the reservation represented in these stories. In 1990, the United States Congress passed the Native American Languages Act, which declared as policy that Native Americans were entitled to use their own languages, and declared the intention of the United Sates to “preserve, protect, and promote the rights and freedom of Native Americans to use, practice, and develop Native American Languages.” In the 19th century, legislation had been passed to mandate that English be used as the “exclusive” language of instruction on all American Indian reservations. Alexie is known for his brutally direct, darkly funny, occasionally “blasphemous” writing about the Native American experience and the “small American traged” encapsulated therein. Alexie has won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction (in 2010, for War Dances), the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction (in 2001), and the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature (in 2007, for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian).
He also wrote and co-produced the movie Smoke Signals, which featured an all-Native cast, crew, and creative team, and was based on several of the stories collected in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. Over the course of his long and storied career, Alexie has published 26 books, including poetry, novels, collections of short stories, a young adult novel, a picture book, and a memoir. He has been a self-described “urban Indian” since 1994, when he moved to Seattle-he still lives there with his family. Sherman Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian, was born in Spokane and grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, WA.
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