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SPEAKER 1: My grandfather was a wonderful bingo player, on my mother's side. I don't know that he was actually wonderful at bingo, but he was a passionate bingo player. And I think that's part of reservation life for many people, being able to go in and play bingo or cards.

SPEAKER 2: So this is nothing new?

SPEAKER 1: No, it's not new. And, in fact, games of chance go way back into very traditional native culture as well. Every tribal group has a Moccasin game, a hand game, stick games, all sorts of games of chance and played. A gambling was always a big part of native life. But, of course, with the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, I'm no expert, but I believe that how-- what it's called, the bingo became bigger high stakes, and, now, casino gambling.

And so we're seeing these enormously successful casinos erected on tribal land or within reservation boundaries. And I couldn't write this book fast enough to keep up with reality. The characters in the book don't know what's coming. They haven't moved quite into the present that is so apparent to people in Minnesota, for instance.

It's a mushroom. And I think it's a fascinating development and a complex one for people on reservations.

SPEAKER 2: Well, indeed. You point out the struggle that people have, whether to even use tribal land, which, oftentimes, is considered sacred land--

SPEAKER 1: Yes.

SPEAKER 2: --for a business.

SPEAKER 1: I think one of the most positive things I've seen, and I've been to lots of casinos, I had to do this research after all. And talked to a lot of people and have relatives who are dealing blackjack or in the business and other people. And I'm very close to people who completely oppose this form of development.

There's people of every belief, and I respect the people who oppose it as well. The most positive thing I see is the use of this sudden influx of money for diversified projects, buying into long-term businesses that will really benefit tribal life in the long run, putting the money into infrastructure like, roads and clinics and daycare, and even buying back land that may lie within tribal boundaries that hasn't been available. It has been outright stolen.

This use of the sudden wealth, I suppose, that we're seeing with the big high stakes casinos is positive. But the erosion of culture and the fears people have of the social ills that may be coming on to further beset native people are very real fears as well.

SPEAKER 2: You don't really get into too much of the political arguments about for and against gaming in your book.

SPEAKER 1: Oh, what a tangle.

SPEAKER 2: Yeah.

SPEAKER 1: I was scared to get into it. And I tried to get into the emotional side of it. For instance, this bingo entrepreneur, this Lyman Lamartine, goes to the Sands Regency, Reno, which is a place--

SPEAKER 2: I haven't seen in the book.

SPEAKER 1: I happen to have been invited there for a Western Literature Association meeting. So I just took notes on everything. And he becomes lured into the greed of this way of life. I think there's an element of greed in it that is very seductive.

SPEAKER 2: So you don't really take a position on whether it's right or it's wrong.

SPEAKER 1: I think it's difficult to do that because I can see how people feel who really say, we don't need this form of development, we don't need this. And yet, other people are coming back solely because there's suddenly a job on the reservation.

And I think, to make a blanket statement about what every tribe does with its casino and its money is a mistake as well, because some people are managing it with extraordinary skill and success. And some tribes aren't doing as well. And it's a mixed bag. I think everyone knows it's a mixed blessing and that it's something to be careful. It's like the luck, the chance, the metaphor itself, and the irony.

I suppose the irony attracted me as well. It's a very difficult problem, to look back through history and to say, well, here we are on scraps of land, and here's a loophole. Let's use it. Let's bring in some revenue, even if it's this kind of business.

It's an ironic thing. And I don't think the irony is lost on any native people at all.

SPEAKER 2: It seems that part of Native American culture itself, and also particularly of your writing, is this intermingling of fantasy and reality. And it's almost like the magical realism of the Latin American writers.

And I'm wondering if that has influenced you at all, or if it's just a part of the culture that you write about?

SPEAKER 1: Well, I read that a lot of the Latin American writers had read Faulkner and been influenced by Faulkner. Now, Faulkner might be my first influence, as he is for so many American writers and also Toni Morrison, a great influence. I haven't read a lot of or South America or Latin American writing. So I'm not sure why. But why there is this sense of fantasy or magic in it, except I think it also has to do with the juxtapositions of despair, and comedy, and the difficulty, and the Catholic set of beliefs that I was raised with,

And this whole set of things working in a native mixed blood background. Because, of course, I'm a mixture of backgrounds. And I suppose that for me, Catholicism was a very influential, part of my childhood. And if you don't believe that you're going to be spoken to out of a burning bush or that a saint is interceding for you, then you're not quite with it as a Catholic, when you're a child.

So you do have these magical beliefs. And then also, through my mother's side of the family, I was very connected to the Chippewa or Ojibwe or Anishinaabe side of my family. It's hard to say where this comes from.

SPEAKER 2: It's very complex, that culture that you come from, and that's portrayed in the book as well. And it's done very well through your writing. And I wonder if that's almost a mission of yours to portray the complexity of the individuals who populate that community.

SPEAKER 1: I'd say, yes. That's absolutely. True for me, that's something that literature, whatever my small part is in literature, my effort is to portray people maybe of a different ethnic background than others are used to with the fullest of complexity and life and liveliness, as I possibly can.

I really worry about the world for our children because while we see the collapse of so many totalitarian governments and the real erasure of communism in large parts of Europe, now. The resurgence of these ancient tribal hatreds is very frightening. Not only are they tribal hatreds that go back and back and back into time, but they are people armed, people with access to nuclear weapons.

And one can't help but think that if in any little way, there's a way to contribute through literature or through s journalism or through thought, whatever way there is to contribute to portraying one another as equally complicated human beings. That's to the good.