Indian Education

(from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven)

SHERMAN ALEXIE
Sherman Alexie is a poet, fiction writer, and filmmaker known for witty and frank explorations of the lives of contemporary Native Americans. A
Spokane/Coeur dAlene Indian, Alexie was born in 1966 and grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington. He spent two
years at Gonzaga University before transferring to Washington State University. In 1991, Alexie published The Business of Fancydancing, a book
of poetry that led the New York Times Book Review to call him one of the major lyric voices of our time. Since then Alexie has published many
more books of poetry, including I would Steal Horses (1993) and One Stick Song (2000); the novels Reservation Blues (1995) and Indian Killer
(1996); and the story collections The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), The Toughest Indian in the World (2000), and Ten Little
Indians (2003). Alexie also wrote and produced Smoke Signals, a film that won awards at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, and he wrote and
directed The Business of Fancydancing (2002). Living in Seattle with his wife and children, Alexie occasionally performs as a stand-up comic and
holds the record for the most consecutive years as World Heavyweight Poetry Bout Champion.
Indian Education Alexie attended the tribal school on the Spokane reservation through the 7th grade, when he decided to seek a better education
at an off-reservation all-white high school. As this account of his schooling makes clear, he was not firmly at home in either setting.

FIRST GRADE
1. My hair was too short and my U.S. Government glasses in the next day and dragged their braids across Betty Towle's
were horn-rimmed, ugly, and all that first winter in school, the desk.
other Indian boys chased me from one corner of the play- 15. "Indians, indians, indians." She said it without capitalization.
ground to the other. They pushed me down, buried me in the She called me "indian, indian, indian."
snow until I couldn't breathe, thought I'd never breathe again. 16. And I said, Yes, I am. I am Indian. Indian, I am.
2. They stole my glasses and threw them over my head, around
my outstretched hands, just beyond my reach, until someone THIRD GRADE
tripped me and sent me falling again, facedown in the snow. 17. My traditional Native American art career began and ended
3. I was always falling down; my Indian name was Junior Falls with my very first portrait: Stick Indian Taking a Piss in My
Down. Sometimes it was Bloody Nose or Steal-His-Lunch. Backyard.
Once, it was Cries-Like-a-White-Boy, even though none of us 18. As I circulated the original print around the classroom, Mrs.
had seen a white boy cry. Schluter intercepted and confiscated my art.
4. Then it was a Friday morning recess and Frenchy St. John 19. Censorship, I might cry now. Freedom of expression, I
threw snowballs at me while the rest of the Indian boys would write in editorials to the tribal newspaper.
tortured some other top-yogh-yaught kid, another weakling. 20. In third grade, though, I stood alone in the corner, faced the
But Frenchy was confident enough to torment me all by wall, and waited for the punishment to end.
himself, and most days I would have let him. 21. I'm still waiting.
5. But the little warrior in me roared to life that day and FOURTH GRADE
knocked Frenchy to the ground, held his head against the 22. "You should be a doctor when you grow up," Mr. Schluter
snow, and punched him so hard that my knuckles and the snow told me, even though his wife, the third grade teacher, thought
made symmetrical bruises on his face. He almost looked like I was crazy beyond my years. My eyes always looked like I
he was wearing war paint. had just hit-and-run someone.
6. But he wasn't the warrior. I was. And I chanted It's a good 23. "Guilty," she said. "You always look guilty."
day to die, it's a good day to die, all the way down to the 24. "Why should I be a doctor?" I asked Mr. Schluter.
principal's office. 25. "So you can come back and help the tribe. So you can heal
SECOND GRADE people."
7. Betty Towle, missionary teacher, redheaded and so ugly that 26. That was the year my father drank a gallon of vodka a day
no one ever had a puppy crush on her, made me stay in for and the same year that my mother started two hundred
recess fourteen days straight. different quilts but never finished any. They sat in separate,
8. "Tell me you're sorry," she said. dark places in our HUD house and wept savagely.
9. "Sorry for what?" I asked. 27. I ran home after school, heard their Indian tears, and looked
10. "Everything," she said and made me stand straight for fifteen in the mirror. Doctor Victor, I called myself, invented an
minutes, eagle-armed with books in each hand. One was a education, talked to my reflection. Doctor Victor to the
math book; the other was English. But all I learned was that emergency room.
gravity can be painful. FIFTH GRADE
11. For Halloween I drew a picture of her riding a broom with a 28. I picked up a basketball for the first time and made my first
scrawny cat on the back. She said that her God would never shot. No. I missed my first shot, missed the basket completely,
forgive me for that. and the ball landed in the dirt and sawdust, sat there just like I
12. Once, she gave the class a spelling test but set me aside and had sat there only minutes before.
gave me a test designed for junior high students. When I 29. But it felt good, that ball in my hands, all those possibilities
spelled all the words right, she crumpled up the paper and and angles. It was mathematics, geometry. It was beautiful.
made me eat it. 30. At that same moment, my cousin Steven Ford sniffed rubber
13. "Youll learn respect," she said. cement from a paper bag and leaned back on the merry-go-
14. She sent a letter home with me that told my parents to either round. His ears rang, his mouth was dry, and everyone seemed
cut my braids or keep me home from class. My parents came so far away.
31. But it felt good, that buzz in his head, all those colors and NINTH GRADE
noises. It was chemistry, biology. It was beautiful. 56. At the farm town high school dance, after a basketball game
32. Oh, do you remember those sweet, almost innocent choices in an overheated gym where I had scored twenty-seven points
that the Indian boys were forced to make? and pulled down thirteen rebounds, I passed out during a slow
song.
SIXTH GRADE
57. As my white friends revived me and prepared to take me to
33. Randy, the new Indian kid from the white town of
the emergency room where doctors would later diagnose my
Springdale, got into a fight an hour after he first walked into
diabetes, the Chicano teacher ran up to us.
the reservation school.
58. "Hey," he said. "What's that boy been drinking? I know all
34. Stevie Flett called him out, called him a squawman, called
about these Indian kids. They start drinking real young."
him a pussy, and called him a punk.
35. Randy and Stevie, and the rest of the Indian boys, walked 59. Sharing dark skin doesn't necessarily make two men
out into the playground. brothers.
36. "Throw the first punch," Stevie said as they squared off. TENTH GRADE
60. I passed the written test easily and nearly flunked the
37. "No," Randy said.
driving, but still received my Washington State driver's license
38. "Throw the first punch," Stevie said again. on the same day that Wally Jim killed himself by driving his
39. "No," Randy said again. car into a pine tree.
40. "Throw the first punch!" Stevie said for the third time, and 61. No traces of alcohol in his blood, good job, wife and two
Randy reared back and pitched a knuckle fastball that broke kids.
Stevie's nose. 62. "Why'd he do it?" asked a white Washington state trooper.
41. We all stood there in silence, in awe. 63. All the Indians shrugged their shoulders, looked down at the
42. That was Randy, my soon-to-be first and best friend, who ground.
taught me the most valuable lesson about living in the white 64. "Don't know," we all said, but when we look in the mirror,
world: Always throw the first punch. see the history of our tribe in our eyes, taste failure in the tap
SEVENTH GRADE water, and shake with old tears, we understand completely.
43. I leaned through the basement window of the HUD house 65. Believe me, everything looks like a noose if you stare at it
and kissed the white girl who would later be raped by her long enough.
foster-parent father, who was also white. They both lived on ELEVENTH GRADE
the reservation, though, and when the headlines and stories 66. Last night I missed two free throws which would have won
filled the papers later, not one word was made of their color. the game against the best team in the state. The farm town high
44. Just Indians being Indians, someone must have said school I play for is nicknamed the "Indians," and I'm probably
somewhere and they were wrong. the only actual Indian ever to play for a team with such a
45. But on the day I leaned through the basement window of the mascot.
HUD house and kissed the white girl, I felt the goodbyes I was 67. This morning I pick up the sports page and read the
saying to my entire tribe. I held my lips tight against her lips, a headline: INDIANS LOSE AGAIN.
dry, clumsy, and ultimately stupid kiss. 68. Go ahead and tell me none of this is supposed to hurt me
46. But I was saying goodbye to my tribe, to all the Indian girls very much.
and women I might have loved, to all the Indian men who TWELFTH GRADE
might have called me cousin, even brother. 69. I walk down the aisle, valedictorian of this farm town high
47. I kissed that white girl and when I opened my eyes, she was school, and my cap doesn't fit because I've grown my hair
gone from the reservation, and when I opened my eyes, I was longer than it's ever been. Later, I stand as the school board
gone from the reservation, living in a farm town where a chairman recites my awards, accomplishments, and
beautiful white girl asked my name. scholarships.
48. "Junior Polatkin," I said, and she laughed. 70. I try to remain stoic for the photographers as I look toward
49. After that, no one spoke to me for another five hundred the future.
years. 71. Back home on the reservation, my former classmates
EIGHTH GRADE graduate: a few can't read, one or two are just given attendance
50. At the farm town junior high, in the boys' bathroom, I could diplomas, most look forward to the parties. The bright students
hear voices from the girls' bathroom, nervous whispers of are shaken, frightened, because they don't know what comes
anorexia and bulimia. I could hear the white girls' forced next.
vomiting, a sound so familiar and natural to me after years of 72. They smile for the photographer as they look back toward
listening to my father's hangovers. tradition.
51. "Give me your lunch if you're just going to throw it up," I 73. The tribal newspaper runs my photograph and the
said to one of those girls once. photograph of my former classmates side by side.
52. I sat back and watched them grow skinny from self-pity.
POSTSCRIPT: CLASS REUNION
53. Back on the reservation, my mother stood in line to get us 74. Victor said, "Why should we organize a reservation high
commodities. We carried them home, happy to have food, and school reunion? My graduating class has a reunion every
opened the canned beef that even the dogs wouldn't eat. weekend at the Powwow Tavern."
54. But we ate it day after day and grew skinny from self-pity.
55. There is more than one way to starve.