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A Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian, Sherman Alexie wafted into the film world with his 1997 cinematic debut Smoke Signals. Prior to his successful venture into filmmaking, he was a self-described “sheltered, small town, rez, Eastern Washington kid” until one little poetry book, entitled The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, launched him to national attention in 1993.

Social commentary, achieved through his novels, films and public appearances, is what Alexie craves to offer. "Political correctness" is not in his vocabulary, as he takes equal aim at rednecks, liberals, conservatives, and, perhaps most shockingly, at American Indians.

Sherman Alexie grants few interviews—he says he likes to either be interviewed by the biggest news operations (think Vicki Mabrey of CBS’ 60 Minutes, who spoke with Alexie in early 2001) or journalists who are just getting their feet wet (think Jessa Crispin, from Bookslut.com, who recently wrote about her passionate crush on Alexie). When asked which end of the spectrum he thought I fell on, he replied, “Obviously the latter.” Undaunt

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According to poet, author, and filmmaker Sherman Alexie, “A lot of Native literature is really foo-foo nature crap, and it’s written by Indians who don’t even live that way.” Alexie’s own work, however, stays far away from the mythologized, spiritual stereotypes surrounding Native Americans, and focuses instead on the realities he grew up with on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington, which ran thick with poverty, alcoholism, and hopelessness. In Alexie’s hands however, these relentless heartbreaks are transformed into lyrical, moving portraits of contemporary Native life, which have garnered the writer a PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, a PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction, a National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, and an NEA Literature Fellowship. We recently spoke with Alexie by phone to hear his thoughts on inspiration, and the role it plays in his creative practice.

What is Inspiration?

Everything gets written down, everything gets remembered, everything gets catalogued. I don’t have that immediate inspiration very often. It is having a mo

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BILL MOYERS: Let's talk now with Sherman Alexie. He comes from a long line of people who have lived the consequences of inequality, Native Americans, the first Americans. They were the target of genocide, ethnic cleansing, which for years was the hidden history of America, kept in the closet by the authors and enforcers of white mythology.

How do you grapple with such a long denied history? If you are Sherman Alexie, you face it down with candor and even irreverence, writing poems, novels, and short stories, and even movies. Here's a clip from “Smoke Signals” that Alexie wrote and co-produced in 1998:

VICTOR IN SMOKE SIGNALS: You got to look mean or people won’t respect you. White people will run all over you if you don’t look mean. You got to look like a warrior. You got to look like you just came back from killing a buffalo.

THOMAS IN SMOKE SIGNALS: But our tribe never hunted buffalo, we were fishermen.

VICTOR IN SMOKE SIGNALS: What? You want to look like you just came back from catching a fish? This ain’t “Dances with Salmon,” you know.

BILL MOYERS: Alexi