Tony Tekaroniake Evans
Basalt Books, WSU Press: 2026
In third grade, Tony Tekaroniake Evans was surprised to learn Indians didn’t exist. Evans had excitedly told his classmates he was Indian while they worked on Thanksgiving decorations, but his teacher disagreed. They were extinct, he had told Evans.
But Evans, a Kahnawake Mohawk of Quebec through his mother, grew up learning the tales of their people from his grandmother, who still spoke their Iroquoian language at home. Indians weren’t gone, he realized—they just didn’t fit the mainstream narrative of the American Dream.
His memoir, bursting with humor and heartbreak, details every step of his journey to find out what it means to be an Indigenous American in today’s world. Positioned between two cultures, he tackles stereotypes that obscure and divide while decoding the political landscape that birthed them.
Through his work as a journalist, Evans connects with his own culture and the cultures of other Indians he meets along the way, each with their own approach to being Indian. For Evans, seeking official recognition, in the form of a waterproof package from the Canadian government, brings solace. Yet, despite their shared background, his older brother Chris eschews official Indian status, preferring to find meaning on a different path.
Evans also explores the sinister methods used to erase and assimilate the Indigenous peoples of North America. Residential schools, broken treaties, stolen land—it was no mistake his third-grade teacher didn’t believe in Indians. He also details more recent political struggles, including the 1990 land dispute between the Mohawk and the city of Oka, Quebec, where members of the tribe barricaded access to ancestral land slated to be turned into a golf course and condominiums.
For outsiders looking in, his memoir opens a window into a world where just being yourself is a struggle against the powers that be. There is no one way to be Indian, Evans realizes, but to be Indian will always be a political act—one that shouldn’t be shied away from.