Sherman Alexie

Q. Do you feel like you’ve been able to make Thanksgiving your own?

A. You take the holiday and make it yours. That doesn’t strip it of its  original meaning or its context. There’s still the really sad holiday as well.  It is a holiday that commemorates the beginning of the end for us, the  death of a culture. I guess you could say Thanksgiving is also about survival,  look how strong we are.

Q. How do you talk to your kids about the Thanksgiving story?

A. You just tell them the truth, the long historical nature of it. They’re  quite aware of what happened to us, the genocide and the way in which  we survive and the way in which my wife and I have survived our individual  Indian autobiographies.

I guess it’s trash talking: “Look, you tried to kill us all, and you couldn’t.”  We’re still here, waving the turkey leg in the face of evil.

Sherman Alexie Interview in Bitch Media