Fascinating, often hilarious, always devastatingly truthful, The Inconvenient Indian is destined to become a classic of historical narrative. For those who wish to better understand Native peoples, it is a must read. For those who don't wish to understand, it is even more so.

I'm fascinated by the magic realism used by many writers. I think it goes hand-in-hand with the Indian experience. It's a very different way of viewing the world.

From a craft standpoint, telling a story in the first-person present tense over the course of 500 pages is a daunting challenge.

Being a mixed-blood person of Ojibway and European ancestry, I always found that I only heard one side of the story - that was the conquerers' side, the side of the French Jesuit missionaries that came to live in what is now Ontario.

Compared to Americans, Canadians are often more gentle in their approach to things. They're much more apologetic. There's less room for conflict.

America seems to celebrate its more violent past, but Canada doesn't like to recognize those things. The willingness to accept the existence of violence separates our two countries.

I'm intrigued by the classic Greek tragedies, as well as by the idea of the Greek chorus.

I say that humans are the only ones in this world that need everything within it. but there is nothing in the world that needs us for its survival. We aren't the masters of the earth. We're the servants.

I never want to play down to the reader. I think readers are willing to go along if they're intrigued.

The world is a different place in this new century, [...]. And we are a different people. My visions still come but no one listens any longer to what they tell us, what they warn us. I knew even as a young woman that destruction bred on the horizon. [...] War touches everyone, and windigos spring from the earth.

There were incredibly complex societies already existing in North America long before Europeans arrived. So many people think that before European contact it was just Natives huddling around a fire, waiting for civilization to come save them. But that was not the case.

There’s something sexy in cooking for a man who likes my food. Am I growing up?

I'm a writer. I should be allowed to speak about my writing at times. And I'm really excited to speak about that. There's nothing I am shameful of or anything else in my novels. They are my children and I'm happy to speak about my children.

Sometimes, it's not getting what we want that offers us the most important Lessons