Word: rez
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...Great Plains (1989) Ian Frazier transformed himself from a supremely hip New Yorker humorist into a serious but never somber chronicler of the American heartland. In On the Rez (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 311 pages; $25) Frazier entertainingly continues this investigation, although his interest is now concentrated on a specific patch of the wide-open spaces, the Pine Ridge Reservation in southwestern South Dakota, home of the Oglala Sioux. Why this place and these people? While researching Great Plains, Frazier met and became friends with Le War Lance, a Sioux man with colorful if not always credible stories...
This attitude may sound like the prelude to a very romantic look at American Indian life. It is not. Frazier treats the people he meets "on the rez" with respect, but he is aware of the problems many of them bring on themselves. There is, for example, their tendency to drink and then drive and be killed in car wrecks. "As I approached the reservation," Frazier writes of his first visit, "I imagined I could feel the life expectancy drop, as palpable as a sudden drop in temperature...
...paper shacks. Not in Alexie's world. Throughout Smoke Signals--which he adapted from his 1993 short-story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven--he doesn't just challenge stereotypes, he pokes fun at them. In his tale of two young dudes who leave "the rez" on a road trip of personal enlightenment, the characters ruminate about everything from Dances with Wolves to a native staple known as fry bread. They also shoot hoops, eat at Denny's and conjure mystical visions. "Sure we have different specific cultural customs," says Alexie, "but we also read Stephen King...
Even if his arrest spells the demise of the Cali cartel, few experts believe that this means an end to the business of drug trafficking in Colombia. "The Rodr?guez Orejuelas are going to fall," said William Ram?rez, a political-science professor at the National University in Bogota. "The Scorpions will fall. But there are always going to be others to replace them until you tackle consumption." That, however, is a problem the U.S. must tend to within its own borders...
...Indian?" "Yes." "You don't look Indian." "Well, I am." "No, you're not." "Oh, yes, I am." The woman with the necklace rummages through her purse, then produces an ID card. Her interrogator beams in belated recognition: "Sister!" A voice- over admonishes, "Never leave the rez without...