Native American Speaker Alexie Set for UMaine Appearance
Contact: Joe Carr at (207) 581-3571
ORONO — He’s called controversial, irreverent, even angry, but writer and public speaker Sherman Alexie, a Spokane Indian from Wellpinit, Wash. most of all wants people to better understand the dilemmas facing Native Americans today.
Alexie, an internationally known poet, author and screenwriter will deliver a frank and provocative talk at the University of Maine April 19. He is scheduled to speak at 8 p.m. at the Maine Center for the Arts. The program is free and open to the public.
In spite of the many ways that Alexie, a member of the northwest Spokane Coeur d’Alene tribe, is described, two words — provocative and inspirational — often arise.
“I think using the word ‘provocative’ is the unique word. I think he sort of prides himself on that,” says Associate History Prof. Maureen Smith, who also is director of Native American Studies at UMaine.
“Stimulating” is a word used by Margo Lukens, an associate professor of English at UMaine who co-taught with Smith a five-week course based on Alexie’s work in anticipation of his appearance on campus.
Alexie has written seven books of poetry, several collections of short stories and two novels. He also produced and wrote the screenplay for the film “Smoke Signals,” based on his book “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.”
Bringing Alexie to the Orono campus was a collaborative effort by nearly ten university offices or departments, and is viewed as a significant way the university can provide an entertaining and educational event for the public, particularly Maine’s Native American communities.
With several hundred Native Americans planning to see Alexie, “this is definitely a big numbers gathering for us,” John Bear Mitchell, interim director of the Wabanaki Center on the Orono campus, says of the Maine-based American Indian population. “This will probably be our biggest audience for a single speaker.”
In addition to a majority of the 152 American Indian students at the University of Maine, the busloads of area school children and adults coming from northern, eastern and southern Maine tribal communities, plus hundreds of non-Native Americans from within the college community and around the state, event coordinators expect a full house April 19.
What is so interesting about Sherman Alexie is that he is, among other things, motivational. He also is a colorful humorist who speaks plainly about issues even many Native Americans don’t often raise in public. He is known for his bare-knuckles lectures on what it is like to be an American Indian in the 21st Century.
“He is using a voice that is really unique,” Mitchell says. “He speaks his mind and he doesn’t care if anybody’s offended by it. But he does it in very humorous way. A lot of people find they can relate to his experiences with reservation life.”
Bob White, assistant provost and dean of Lifelong Learning at UMaine, has met Alexie, and understands the enthusiasm.
In his writing and in his public appearances, Alexie “takes an irreverent look at the world,” says White. “I think Sherman Alexie can articulate the circumstances in which Native Americans find themselves today in terms of their own reservation life experience, and the issues they are dealing with juxtaposed with the Anglo-American experience. He does this in a very self-deprecating, yet inspirational way.
“It’s a provocative way that addresses the plight of Native American Indians in this country and implores other Americans to help improve their lives,” White says.
Lukens, who is “delighted” Alexie is coming, says it speaks well for the university to invest so substantially in the cost of bringing Alexie here.
Both Native Americans and other ethnically diverse populations sometimes feel “invisible” in a world of Anglo-Americans, according to Smith.
“The Native people of Maine for a long time have felt very alienated from campus,” Lukens adds, “because there was nothing to reflect their experience.”
But Alexie’s upfront message may be a catharsis for Native Americans in want of a voice that will be heard.
“He’s willing to address issues many Native American people are not willing to address,” says Maureen Smith, who also is a member of the Oneida tribe, part of the Iroquois Confederacy. “He kind of lays bare issues of the Native community. I think it’s a very challenging role to be in. I think that’s what makes him so important.”
Both Smith and Lukens note that Alexie is a respected creative force educationally.
“He’s such a high profile Native writer,” says Lukens. “Everybody knows who he is and they know him from his books and his movies.”
“Certainly the fact that he is the first person who wrote a movie that was nationally distributed, that was produced and directed entirely by Native American people and so successful it went in to the mainstream market