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345 Acknowledgments The major challenge of this project was finding people of many backgrounds who were willing to talk to me. To those who were, and did, I thank them most of all for their time, their frankness, and their trust. Although I located a number of interviewees on my own, the majority I met because of softening intermediaries, sometimes a row of them, and some not in person. My gratitude, as I picture the east-to-west arc of interviews , goes to Theda Perdue, Linda Oxendine, Laura Harris, Helen Robbins, Donald Fixico, Heather Ahtone, Cecilia Fire Thunder, Susan Masten, Kalyn Free, Randella Bluehouse, the late Carol Monpere, Cyn Rivera, Scott Ridgway, Kristi Denton Cohen, Aurolyn Stwyer, Jacques Verduin, Steve Emrick, Ruth Felt, Judy Harding, Melanie Mociun, Lorraine Thompson, and Manulele Clarke. Many thanks as well to everyone who made attempts that never bore fruit. As a miserable fund-raiser (I still yearn for a foundation category called “de facto nonprofit for individuals”), I am especially grateful to Barbara Bencini, Mary Turnbull, the Marin Arts Council, and my beloved late cousin, Nancy Ann Owings. To those who generously offered me a place to lay my head while away from home, I thank, in a roughly east to west line of pillows, in addition to some named above, Kathy Wahl, Carol Sibley, Pam Sweeney, LuAnn Jamieson, Marwin Begay, Jean Nahomni Mani, Karen Artichoker, Marg Elliston and Fred Harris, Emma George, Stella and Freddie Goldtooth, Ruth and Don Perdue, and Christine and Bobby Guy. ACK.qxd 12/14/10 8:43 AM Page 345 In the years-long course from inception to completion of this book, countless people offered advice, warnings, recommended readings, road tours, and more. Of them all, I am especially indebted (again, some sight unseen) to Paul Apodaca, Deborah Booker, Connie and Michael Brown, Beth Castle, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Luke Esty-Kendall, Malcolm Margolin, Peter Nabokov, Susanne and Jake Page, Edwin Schupman, Cris Stainbrook, and always helpful Indian-Americana librarians—John Berry of the University of California at Berkeley and Mario Klimiades of the Heard Museum. For unexpected gifts of unexpectedly helpful books, thank you John Dietz, Leah Garchik, Lindsay Miller, and John Peterson. Undaunted transcribers Sheri Prager and Amy Smith rendered every audible word legible—no easy task considering the sometimes challenging background seasonings (powwow, restaurant, prison, car/van/truck engine) and the sometimes less than professional microphone placement and volume-level adjustment by interviewer. Sheri and Amy also both went well beyond their job description, offering such add-ons as Navajo spellings and relevant Web sites. A finicky quoter, I replayed every bit of audio as I went over every line of transcript, but with Sheri and Amy at the controls, there was rarely anything to correct. I always felt I owed them more than their invoices. My writing group yet again listened to many chapters and improved them. Thank you Whitney Chadwick, Mary Felstiner, Carol Field, Diana Ketcham, Jean McMann, B. K. Moran, Annegret Ogden, Diana O’Hehir, and, most especially, Cyra McFadden, whom I leaned on in the final throes of wrestling my manuscript down to contractual size. Her suggested winnowings, parings, and trimmings were precisely, so to speak, what I needed. Thanks too to copyeditor Kathryn Gohl for extra finickiness. To Ellen Levine and Leslie Mitchner, thank you for every detail. Finally, throughout every moment, in every way, my husband, Jonathan Perdue, provided whatever was humanly possible. I thank him most of all. acknowledgments 346 ACK.qxd 12/14/10 8:43 AM Page 346 ...

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