Book: Old School Indian

Author: Aaron John Curtis

Publisher: Zando – Hillman Grad Books

Format: Coming-of-middle age, Indigenous culture, returning home

Setting/Era: Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) reservation in 2016

Debut novel: Yes

Author Interview by Diane Slocum

Abe Jacobs is suffering from an illness that defies diagnosis and leaves him drifting in his life. His relationship with his wife seems to be losing its spark. He travels from his home in Florida back to Ahkwesáhsne, the reservation where he grew up with his family. His Great Uncle Budge has a reputation as a healer and, though a skeptic, Abe figures he might as well give it a try. While he is there, he reconnects with family and friends (and old enemies) and finds parts of himself he had lost.

AUTHORLINK: What was your first thought that led to this story? How did it develop from there?

Let the subconscious tell the stories

CURTIS: I don’t outline or plot, I let my subconscious tell me stories. This can lead to visceral work which feels very of the moment. It also means I tell on myself more than I’d like. I wrote a short story about a guy who was dying of a disease no one could diagnose because at the time, I had a host of mysterious symptoms my primary doctor and specialists in rheumatology, dermatology, and neurology could not diagnose. Eight weeks of testing can feel a lot longer when the diagnoses they’re circling all have mortal outcomes. Basically, I was scared to die or lose my mind to vascular dementia, and I was angry to have it happening at age 43. All that fear and anger flowed onto the page.

My writers group loved it. They encouraged me to flesh it out into a novella, and eventually into a novel.

AUTHORLINK:   How did you come up with the idea of using Dominick Deer Woods as the narrator and as the poet between chapters and as Abe’s alter ego? How does he help tell Abe’s story?

Third person narration helps deal with anger

CURTIS: The anger in my first draft manifested as a lot of hostility towards an imagined white reader and abusive language towards Abe, who carried a lot of my guilt at not sharing my work or taking my craft more seriously. Diana Abu-Jaber, who leads the writers group I mentioned, suggested I try third person to see what a bit of distance might unlock. A second writers group, all younger women of color, liked the third person but missed the immediacy of the first person version. All this to say it’s important to write in community with other writers, because I would not have found Dominick on my own. Dominick allowed me to approach pain and trauma with humor instead of hostility. He also had more empathy for Abe. I was not sure who Dominick was until the scene in Zopie’s Caffeine Fix, where Abe had to stand up in front of a crowd to perform poems. Then it fell into place.

AUTHORLINK: I hardly read a novel any more that doesn’t have flashbacks. How did you use that technique to tell Abe’s story? How did you choose what parts of his life to feature and when?

Decide what the reader needs

CURTIS:  Shout out to my stellar editor, Erin Wicks, because the original manuscript was twice as long. Every other chapter weaved Abe’s past with the 2016 present of the novel, with a poem in between. I’d highly recommend this technique for getting to know your characters better, but the editing process told us we didn’t need most of it. After that, it was a matter of deciding what the reader needed to know to understand Abe’s journey, and when those bits best fit into the narrative. Some whole chapters were reduced to a single passing line, which is why I find the editing process so crucial and fascinating.

AUTHORLINK:  How did you get the title Old School Indian?

CURTIS: The scene where Budge Billings says it has existed since the novella draft. Once Budge said it, I knew right away it would make a great title. He’s explaining to Abe why his body is dying, and to get there Budge tells a story that pays homage to a similar scene in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony. As a reader, I also love it when a title gets dropped in scene.

AUTHORLINK:   Can you discuss how some of your characters – Abe, Sis, Budge, Yonder (?), Brennan (?) – whoever you want to mention, demonstrate different aspects of Native life now?

The Characters demonstrate Native life

CURTIS: I love this question. Uncle Budge is that old guy with no TV and no ID and no official source of income who just being around him somehow validates your own identity as a Native person. He’s like a window to the ancestors. He’s also a recovered alcoholic, and a lot of my friends and family have struggled through addiction to arrive at the best versions of themselves. Yonder is the other side of the coin, the guy who’s stuck in his trauma and can’t stop inflicting it on others. Sharon Oaks, Abe’s cousin, is based on my cousin Karen Oaks. Talking to her always reminds me how living off Res negatively affects my thinking, and I wanted Abe to have that experience as well. She’s living her everyday as an environmental tester, dressing like a drywall contractor, looking like a rugby player, barely realizing how sacred she actually is. And when she does think about it? She pokes fun at it.

AUTHORLINK:   You mention several works that tell Native stories. Do you think such films and novels, including your own, help develop more understanding and better relations between peoples?

CURTIS: That’s the dream, isn’t it? For reading to breed empathy. My family grew up not seeing representation of modern Natives, so we’d end up watching movies like Mi Familia, Soul Food, and My Big Fat Greek Wedding over and over because we could relate. The more specific Native stories get about their families, and their character’s lives, the more readers will see themselves and realize we’re not all that different.

AUTHORLINK: Alex was the only non-Native person with a big role in your novel, but I wonder what your suggestions would be if the author is non-Native and the story requires important roles for Native characters. You mention Taylor Sheridan, for instance, as someone who often features indigenous themes.

CURTIS: Sensitivity readers are a great resource. If I set a scene in a courtroom, for instance, I’d ask my lawyer friend to take a look. Since there are 575 recognized tribes and a few hundred without federal recognition, I’d say the biggest trap for a non-Native writer would be pan-Indian representation. Don’t make a generic “Native” for flavor. Name the Nation and find a member from that Nation who is willing to read your work and give feedback, ideally for a fee. I’d also be suspect of a Diné reader who is willing to offer feedback on your Seminole character, unless it’s with a lot of caveats.

Taylor Sheridan went to Pine Ridge to research the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women crisis prior to Wind River. What he ends up making is white savior copaganda which feels authentic because of the details he took from Oglala families. It’s the best we can expect from a man living on stolen land built by stolen labor in a country created to serve people who look like him, and if watching it is the first time you hear about the MMIW crisis then you are forgiven for enjoying it as a thriller.

I’m glad the 2017 movie has legs and continues to bring more awareness to the MMIW plight, but Sheridan, despite claiming he wrote Wind River to bring awareness to MMIW, never mentions the dozens of documentaries by Native filmmakers addressing it. Docs because this is not entertainment to us. Nor does Sheridan recommend these films to his viewers to uplift the people fighting in this space. Even worse, he claims Wind River was responsible for the Violence Against Women Act creating a database of missing and murdered Indigenous women and allowing US citizens to be prosecuted for raping Native women in Indian Country. This happened in 2022, but Sheridan’s claim erases the Native activists – mostly women – who have been fighting to broaden the scope of the VAWA since 1994. He is not addressing his blind spots when it comes to Natives, which is a problem for someone so enamored with “frontier” stories and modern westerns. It’s a complicated issue. It’s a net positive the movie exists. I just wish Sheridan would do more to uplift the Natives working on the MMIW issue rather than exaggerating his own importance.

AUTHORLINK:   So, since indigenous, by definition, is not foreign, do you think whenever anyone includes Indigenous words in a story, we shouldn’t italicize them?

CURTIS: Context is everything. A Mohawk dude from the rez might seamlessly blend Kanien’kéha into their thoughts. Or they might have been born off-rez and be so hungry for connection that shé:kon and skén:nen might feel talismanic and deserving of special emphasis. How does a white character hear the language? How does a Black character whose parents were Nigerian immigrants speaking a mix of English and Igbo hear it? How the narrator experiences the language is more important than how the reader experiences it. I’d love to give a one-size fits all rule to make it easy, but I don’t think one exists.

AUTHORLINK:   What are you working on next?

CURTIS:  Most immediately Jim Terry, the Ho-Chunk artist behind the incredible graphic memoir Come Home, Indio, is putting on a Halloween campfire show on The Newberry in Chicago called “Terry’s Scaries.” I and three other Native storytellers – Anishinaabe, Inuit, and Seneca – will read our spooky tales around a campfire, then there’ll be a break catered by Anishnaabe and Menominee chef Quentin Two-Rivers Broeffle, then Terry’s going to show a short film of his. Horror is my first love, so I’m psyched for that. On a bigger scale there’s a young adult version of Old School Indian in the works so teachers can introduce the story to younger students. I’ve gotten a lot of requests for it on tour, and talking with college and high school students has been incredible, so I’m working on that.

About the author: Aaron John Curtis is a member of the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe, or the American side of Ahkwesáhsne. He has judged for a raft of contests including the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance prizes, the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction and the 2021 National Book Award for Nonfiction. He has been the quartermaster at Books & Books, Miami’s largest independent bookstore for 22 years. He lives in Miami. Old School Indian is his first novel.