You talk of first-hand experiences with Indians: working with them, living among them, teaching them, sitting with Indian elders and of hearing them talk about white culture and what it often does to us (yes, I’m Native, full-blooded and living my culture day-by-day). You’ve heard, all right, but I wonder, have you been listening?

“If they don’t want books on Indians done by white people, I don’t want to do them. End of story. It’s a simple matter of respect.” When exactly did you arrive to this conclusion Mr. Nerburn? I’ve read enough of your books (and my wife has read each and every one of those you have published) and find that you seem unable, over and over, to stay away from the subject. It is almost as if you cannot write about anything without, at the very least, including mention of Indian wisdom passed on to you somewhere in the text. Is this a newfound belief you hold? Was it born in you after a Nez Perce woman brought it, once again, back to your attention? I marvel at someone who claims to have the ability to hear the voices of ancient Indians at various places you happen to visit (or so you imply in Road Angels) and who, at the same time, has no qualms about ignoring the live and present Indian voices who take the time to reach out and speak their minds. Interesting juxtaposition indeed.

What exactly is this moral premise you so strongly profess to hold? Perhaps you don’t fully consider yourself a white person writing about Indians? I remember another passage in Road Angels in which you talk of your son’s tendency to take his time before talking, comparing it to the Ojibwe way, then half-heartedly suggesting he might’ve picked up the habit from drinking the local water. Is that what has happened to you as well? Is that why you are able to morally reject white authors writing books about Indians but then turn around and yourself do nothing but?

Like children, books may not always turn out like you expect, true, but as men, making either one is a matter of choice. For your purposes, it seems rather convenient to apologize, as you do at the end of your intro to the Chief Joseph book, for any violations to boundaries your “Indian friends might not have [you] cross.” As the saying goes, ask forgiveness not permission, uh? You claim to feel compelled to help us all see the humanity “at the core of our national experience”, speaking almost with a sense of divine mission. Perhaps you believe it to be so, and yet I cannot help but wonder the extent to which your prolific pen follows the directions, however conscious or not, given by your publisher, your audience (at least the kind that posts messages in this website), even the real world—you know, the one in which you must sell books in order to make a living, to provide for your family and to allow yourself the indulgence of thinking and writing as a full-time career. Under such circumstances, I understand how easy it can be to turn a deaf ear to the minority who dares speak against a project so dear to your heart and that of others.

-Travis Nabahe