Victor said, "Why should we organize a reservation high school reunion? 74My graduating class has a reunion every weekend at the Powwow Tavern.

my former classmates graduate: a few can't 71read, one or two are just given attendance diplomas, most look forward to theparties

I try to remain stoic for the photographers as I look toward the future.

Go ahead and tell me none of this is supposed to hurt me very much

high school I play for isnicknamed the "Indians," and I'm probably the only actual Indian ever to playfor a team with such a mascot.

Believe me, everything looks like a noose if you stare at it long enough

"Why'd he do it?

received my Washington State driver's license on the same day that Wally Jimkilled himself by driving his car into a pine tree.

Sharing dark skin doesn't necessarily make two men brothers

"Hey," he said. "What's that boy been drinking? I know all about these ssIndian kids. They start drinking real young

doctors would later diagnose my diabetes,

I passed out during a slow song

There is more than one way to starve.

Back on the reservation, my mother stood in line to get us commodities

Give me your lunch if you're just going to throw it up

white girls' forced vomiting, a sound so familiar and natural to meafter years of listening to my father's hangovers

nervous whispers of anorexia and bulimia.

Junior Polatkin," I said, and she laughed.

when I opened my eyes, she was gone from the 47reservation, and when I opened my eyes, I was gone from the reservation,

I held my lips tight against her lips, a dry, clumsy, and ultimately stu-pid kiss.

They both lived on the reservation,

Always throw the firstpunch.

Randy, my soon-to-be first and best friend

squawman

almost innocent choices that the 32Indian boys were forced to make?

that buzz in his head, all those colors and noises. It was 31chemistry, biology. It was beautiful

that ball in my hands, all those possibilities and angles. It 29was mathematics, geometry. It was beautiful.

Doctor Victor, I called myself,

y father drank a gallon of vodka a day and the same 26year that my mother started two hundred different quilts but never finishedany. They sat in separate, dark places in our HUD 1 house and wept savagely.

"So you can come back and help the tribe. So you can heal people.

"You should be a doctor when you grow up," Mr. Schluter told me

I stood alone in the corner, faced the wall, and 20waited for the punishment to end.

Stick Indian Taking a Piss in My Backyard.

I said, Yes, I am. I am Indian. Indian, I am.

My parents came in the next day anddragged their braids across Betty Towle's desk."Indians, indians, indians."

told my parents to either cut my 14braids or keep me home from class.

shecrumpled up the paper and made me eat it

She said that her God would never forgive me for that

Betty Towle, missionary teacher, redheaded and so ugly that no one everhad a puppy crush on her,

all the way down to the principal's office

But he wasn't the warrior. I was.

But the little warrior in me roared to life that day and knocked Frenchy tothe ground, held his head against the snow, and punched him so hard that myknuckles and the snow made symmetrical bruises on his face

thought I'd never breathe again

As this year-by-year account of his schooling makesclear, he was not firmly at home in either setting.