Sherman Alexie Childhood Where was Sherman Alexie born at Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane, Washington. In what year was he born October 7, 1966, Who were his parents His father, Sherman Joseph Alexie, Where did he attend school reservation school
Did he live in a reservation
Did Sherman Alexie live in a reservation?
Alexie was born on October 7, 1966, at Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane, Washington. As a little child he lived on the Spokane Indian Reservation, located west of Spokane. His father, Sherman Joseph Alexie, was a member of the Coeur d'Alene tribe, and his mother, Lillian Agnes Cox, was of Colville, Choctaw, Spokane and European American ancestry. One of his paternal great-grandfathers was of Russian descent. Alexie was born with hydrocephalus, a condition that occurs when there is an abnormally large amount of cerebral fluid in the cranial cavity. He had to have brain surgery when he was six months old, and was at high risk of death or mental disabilities if he survived. Alexie's surgery was successful; he suffered no mental damage but had other side effects.  His parents were alcoholics though his mother was a sober alcoholic. His father often left the house on drinking binges for days at a time. To support her six children, Alexie's mother, Lillian, sewed quilts, worked as a clerk at the Wellpinit Trading Post and had some other jobs.  Alexie has described his life at the reservation school as challenging because he was constantly teased by other kids as well as endured abuse he described as "torture" from teachers who were white nuns. They called him "The Globe" because his head was larger than usual, due to the hydrocephalus as an infant. Until the age of seven, Alexie suffered from seizures and bedwetting; he had to take strong drugs to control them. Because of his health problems, he was excluded from many of the activities that are rites of passage for young Indian males. Alexie excelled academically, reading everything available, including auto repair manuals. CANNOTANSWER
CANNOTANSWER
Sherman Joseph Alexie Jr. (born October 7, 1966) is a Spokane-Coeur d'Alene-Native American novelist, short story writer, poet, and filmmaker.  His writings draw on his experiences as an Indigenous American with ancestry from several tribes. He grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation and now lives in Seattle, Washington.

His best-known book is The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), a collection of short stories. It was adapted as the film Smoke Signals (1998), for which he also wrote the screenplay.

His first novel, Reservation Blues, received a 1996 American Book Award.
His first young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007), is a semi-autobiographical novel that won the 2007 U.S. National Book Award for Young People's Literature and the Odyssey Award as best 2008 audiobook for young people (read by Alexie). His 2009 collection of short stories and poems, War Dances, won the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

Alexie is the guest editor of the 2015 Best American Poetry.

In 2018 he was accused of sexual harassment by multiple women.

Early life
Alexie was born on October 7, 1966, at Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane, Washington. As a child he lived on the Spokane Indian Reservation, located west of Spokane. His father, Sherman Joseph Alexie, was a member of the Coeur d'Alene tribe, and his mother, Lillian Agnes Cox, was of Colville, Choctaw, Spokane and European American ancestry. One of his paternal great-grandfathers was of Russian descent. Alexie was born with hydrocephalus, a condition that occurs when there is an abnormally large amount of cerebral fluid in the brain's ventricular system. He had to have brain surgery when he was six months old, and was at high risk of death or mental disabilities if he survived. Alexie's surgery was successful; he suffered no mental damage but
had other side effects.

His parents were alcoholics, though his mother achieved sobriety. His father often left the house on drinking binges for days at a time. To support her six children, Alexie's mother, Lillian, sewed quilts, worked as a clerk at the Wellpinit Trading Post, and had some other jobs.

Alexie has described his life at the reservation school as challenging, as he was constantly teased by other kids and endured abuse he described as "torture" from white nuns who taught there. They called him "The Globe" because his head was larger than usual, due to suffering hydrocephalus as an infant. Until the age of seven, Alexie suffered from seizures and bedwetting; he had to take strong drugs to control them. Because of his health problems, he was excluded from many of the activities that are rites of passage for young Indian males. Alexie excelled academically, reading everything available, including auto repair manuals.

Education
In order to better his education, Alexie decided to leave the reservation and attend high school in Reardan, Washington., 22 miles from the reservation, and where Alexie was the only Native American student. He excelled at his studies and became a star player on the basketball team, the Reardan High School Indians. He was elected class president and was a member of the debate team.

His successes in high school won him a scholarship in 1985 to Gonzaga University, a Roman Catholic university in Spokane. Originally, Alexie enrolled in the pre-med program with hopes of becoming a doctor, but found he was squeamish during dissection in his anatomy classes. Alexie switched to law, but found that was not suitable, either. He felt enormous pressure to succeed in college, and consequently, he began drinking heavily to cope with his anxiety. Unhappy with law, Alexie found comfort in literature classes.

In 1987, he dropped out of Gonzaga and enrolled in Washington State University (WSU), where he took a creative writing course taught by Alex Kuo, a respected poet of Chinese-American background. Alexie was at a low point in his life, and Kuo served as a mentor to him. Kuo gave Alexie an anthology entitled Songs of This Earth on Turtle's Back, by Joseph Bruchac. Alexie said this book changed his life as it taught him "how to connect to non-Native literature in a new way". He was inspired by reading works of poetry written by Native Americans.

Sexual harassment allegations
On February 28, 2018, Alexie published a statement regarding accusations of sexual harassment against him by several women, including author Litsa Dremousis, with whom he had a consensual affair in the past and who claimed numerous women had spoken to her about Alexie's behavior. Alexie admitted he had "harmed" other people besides Dremousis. Dremousis's response initially appeared on her Facebook page and was subsequently reprinted in  The Stranger on March 1, 2018. The allegations against Alexie were detailed in an NPR story five days later. NPR corroborated the sexual harassment allegations of three other women. The fallout from these accusations includes the Institute of American Indian Arts renaming its Sherman Alexie Scholarship as the MFA Alumni Scholarship. The blog Native Americans in Children's Literature has deleted or modified all references to Alexie. In February 2018 it was reported that the American Library Association, which had just awarded Alexie its Carnegie Medal for You Don't Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir, was reconsidering, and in March it was confirmed that Alexie had declined the award and was postponing the publication of a paperback version of the memoir. The American Indian Library Association rescinded its 2008 Best Young Adult Book Award from Alexie for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, "to send an unequivocal message that Alexie's actions are unacceptable."

Career
Alexie published his first collection of poetry, The Business of Fancydancing: Stories and Poems, in 1992 through Hanging Loose Press. With that success, Alexie stopped drinking and quit school just three credits short of a degree. However, in 1995, he was awarded an honorary bachelor's degree from Washington State University.

In 2005, Alexie became a founding board member of Longhouse Media, a non-profit organization that is committed to teaching filmmaking skills to Native American youth and using media for cultural expression and social change.  Alexie has long supported youth programs and initiatives dedicated to supporting at-risk Native youth.

Literary works

Alexie's stories have been included in several short story anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories 2004, edited by Lorrie Moore; and Pushcart Prize XXIX of the Small Presses. Additionally, a number of his pieces have been published in various literary magazines and journals, as well as online publications.

Themes
Alexie's poetry, short stories and novels explore themes of despair, poverty, violence and alcoholism among the lives of Native American people, both on and off the reservation. They are lightened by wit and humor. According to Sarah A. Quirk from the Dictionary of Library Biography, Alexie asks three questions across all of his works: "What does it mean to live as an Indian in this time?  What does it mean to be an Indian man? Finally, what does it mean to live on an Indian reservation?"  The protagonists in most of his literary works exhibit a constant struggle with themselves and their own sense of powerlessness in white American society.

Poetry
Within a year of graduating from college, Alexie received the Washington State Arts Commission Poetry Fellowship and the National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship. His career began with the publishing of his first two collections of poetry in 1992, entitled, I Would Steal Horses and The Business of Fancydancing. In these poems, Alexie uses humor to express the struggles of contemporary Indians on reservations. Common themes include alcoholism, poverty and racism.  Although he uses humor to express his feelings, the underlying message is very serious.  Alexie was awarded The Chad Walsh Poetry Prize by the Beloit Poetry Journal in 1995.

The Business of Fancydancing: Stories and Poems (1992)  was well received, selling over 10,000 copies. Alexie refers to his writing as "fancydancing," a flashy, colorful style of competitive Pow wow dancing. Whereas older, traditional forms of Indian dance may be ceremonial and kept private among tribal members, the fancydance style was created by Native American veterans from World War II as a form of public entertainment. Alexie compares the mental, emotional, and spiritual outlet that he finds in his writings to the vivid self-expression of the dancers. Leslie Ullman commented on The Business of Fancydancing in the Kenyon Review, writing that Alexie "weaves a curiously soft-blended tapestry of humor, humility, pride and metaphysical provocation out of the hard realities...: the tin-shack lives, the alcohol dreams, the bad luck and burlesque disasters, and the self-destructive courage of his characters."

Alexie's other collections of poetry include:
The Business of Fancydancing: Stories and Poems (1992)
Old Shirts and New Skins (1993)
First Indian on the Moon (1993)
Seven Mourning Songs For the Cedar Flute I Have Yet to Learn to Play (1994)
Water Flowing Home (1996)
The Summer of Black Widows (1996)
The Man Who Loves Salmon (1998)
One Stick Song (2000)
Face (2009), Hanging Loose Press (April 15, 2009) hardcover, 160 pages,

Short stories
Alexie published his first prose work, entitled The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, in 1993. The book consists of a series of short stories that are interconnected.  Several prominent characters are explored, and they have been featured in later works by Alexie.  According to Sarah A. Quirk, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven can be considered a bildungsroman with dual protagonists, "Victor Joseph and Thomas Builds-the-Fire, moving from relative innocence to a mature level on experience."

Ten Little Indians (2004) is a collection of "nine extraordinary short stories set in and around the Seattle area, featuring Spokane Indians from all walks of urban life," according to Christine C. Menefee of the School Library Journal. In this collection, Alexie "challenges stereotypes that whites have of Native Americans and at the same time shows the Native American characters coming to terms with their own identities."

War Dances is a collection of short stories, poems, and short works. It won the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.  The collection, however, received mixed reviews.

Other short stories by Alexie include:

Superman and Me (1997)
The Toughest Indian in the World (2000) (collection of short stories)
"What You Pawn I Will Redeem" (2003), published in The New Yorker
Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories (2012)
"Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play 'The Star−Spangled Banner' at Woodstock"

Novels
In his first novel, Reservation Blues (1995), Alexie revisits some of the characters from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. Thomas Builds-the-Fire, Victor Joseph, and Junior Polatkin, who have grown up together on the Spokane Indian reservation, were teenagers in the short story collection. In Reservation Blues they are now adult men in their thirties. Some of them are now musicians and in a band together. Verlyn Klinkenborg of the Los Angeles Times wrote in a 1995 review of Reservation Blues: "you can feel Alexie's purposely divided attention, his alertness to a divided audience, Native American and Anglo." Klinkenborg says that Alexie is "willing to risk didacticism whenever he stops to explain the particulars of the Spokane and, more broadly, the Native American experience to his readers."

Indian Killer (1996) is a murder mystery set among Native American adults in contemporary Seattle, where the characters struggle with urban life, mental health, and the knowledge that there is a serial killer on the loose. Characters deal with the racism in the University system, as well as in the community at large, where Indians are subjected to being lectured about their own culture by white professors who are actually ignorant of Indian cultures.

Alexie's young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007) is a coming-of-age story that began as a memoir of his life and family on the Spokane Indian reservation. The novel focuses on a fourteen-year-old Indian named Arnold Spirit. The novel is semi-autobiographical, including many events and elements of Alexie's life. For example, Arnold was born with hydrocephalus, and was teased a lot as a child. The story also portrays events after Arnold's transfer to Reardan High School, which Alexie attended. The novel received great reviews and continues to be a top seller. Bruce Barcott from the New York Times Book Review observed, "Working in the voice of a 14-year-old forces Alexie to strip everything down to action and emotion, so that reading becomes more like listening to your smart, funny best friend recount his day while waiting after school for a ride home."

Flight (2007) also features an adolescent protagonist. The narrator, who calls himself "Zits," is a fifteen-year-old orphan of mixed Native and European ancestry who has bounced around the foster system in Seattle. The novel explores experiences of the past, as Zits experiences short windows into others' lives after he believes to be shot while committing a crime.

Memoir 
Alexie's memoir, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me, was released by Hachette in June 2017. Claudia Rowe of The Seattle Times wrote in June 2017 that the memoir "pulls readers so deeply into the author's youth on the Spokane Indian Reservation that most will forget all about facile comparisons and simply surrender to Alexie's unmistakable patois of humor and profanity, history and pathos." Alexie cancelled his book tour in support of You Don't Have to Say You Love Me in July 2017 due to the emotional toll that promoting the book was taking. In September 2017, he decided to resume the tour, with some significant changes. As he related to Laurie Hertzel of The Star Tribune, "I’m not performing the book," he said. "I’m getting interviewed. That's a whole different thing." He went on to add that he won't be answering any questions that he doesn't want to answer. "I’ll put my armor back on," he said.

Films
In 1998 Alexie's film, Smoke Signals gained considerable attention. Alexie based the screenplay on his short story collection, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and characters and events from a number of Alexie's works make appearances in the film. The film was directed by Chris Eyre, (Cheyenne-Arapaho)  with a predominantly Native American production team and cast. The film is a road movie and buddy film, featuring two young Indians, Victor Joseph (Adam Beach) and Thomas Builds the Fire (Evan Adams), who leave the reservation on a road trip to retrieve the body of Victor's dead father (Gary Farmer). During their journey the characters' childhood is explored via flashbacks. The film took top honors at the Sundance Film Festival. It received an 86% and "fresh" rating from the online film database Rotten Tomatoes.

The Business of Fancydancing, written and directed by Alexie in 2002, explores themes of Indian identity, gay identity, cultural involvement vs blood quantum, living on the reservation or off it, and other issues related to what makes someone a "real Indian." The title refers to the protagonist's choice to leave the reservation and make his living performing for predominantly-white audiences. Evan Adams, who plays Thomas Builds the Fire in "Smoke Signals", again stars, now as an urban gay man with a white partner. The death of a peer brings the protagonist home to the reservation, where he reunites with his friends from his childhood and youth. The film is unique in that Alexie hired an almost completely female crew to produce the film. Many of the actors improvised their dialogue, based on real events in their lives.  It received a 57% and "rotten" rating from the online Film database Rotten Tomatoes.

Other film projects include:

49? (writer, 2003)
The Exiles (presenter, 2008)
Sonicsgate (participant, 2009)

Bibliography

Poetry

Collections
 The Business of Fancydancing: Stories and Poems (1992)
 Old Shirts and New Skins (1993)
 First Indian on the Moon (1993)
 Seven Mourning Songs For the Cedar Flute I Have Yet to Learn to Play (1994)
 Water Flowing Home (1996)
 The Summer of Black Widows (1996)
 The Man Who Loves Salmon (1998)
 One Stick Song (2000)
 Face (2009), Hanging Loose Press (April 15, 2009) hardcover, 160 pages, 
  Hymn (2017)

Uncollected poems

Memoir 
 You Don't Have to Say You Love Me (2017), Hachette Book Group, .

Novels
 Reservation Blues (1995)
 Indian Killer (1996)
 The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)
 Flight (2007)

Short fiction

Collections
 The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993)
 The Toughest Indian in the World (2000)
 Ten Little Indians (2004)
 War Dances (2009)
 Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories (2012)

List of short stories

Children's books
Thunder Boy, Jr. (2016), illustrated by Yuyi Morales

Personal life
Alexie is married to Diane Tomhave, who is of Hidatsa, Ho-Chunk and Potawatomi heritage. They live in Seattle with their two sons.

Arizona HB 2281
In 2012, Arizona's HB 2281 removed Alexie's works, along with those of others, from Arizona school curriculum. Alexie's response:

{{quote|Let's get one thing out of the way: Mexican immigration is an oxymoron. Mexicans are indigenous. So, in a strange way, I'm pleased that the racist folks of Arizona have officially declared, in banning me alongside Urrea, Baca, and Castillo, that their anti-immigration laws are also anti-Indian. I'm also strangely pleased that the folks of Arizona have officially announced their fear of an educated underclass. You give those brown kids some books about brown folks and what happens? Those brown kids change the world. In the effort to vanish our books, Arizona has actually given them enormous power. Arizona has made our books sacred documents now.}}

Influences
Alexie's writings are meant to evoke sadness, but at the same time, he uses humor and pop culture that leave the readers with a sense of respect, understanding, and compassion.  Alexie's influences for his literary works do not rely solely on traditional Indian forms. He "blends elements of popular culture, Indian spirituality, and the drudgery of poverty-ridden reservation life to create his characters and the world they inhabit," according to Quirk. Alexie's work is laced with often startling humor. According to Quirk, he does this as a "means of cultural survival for American Indians—survival in the face of the larger American culture's stereotypes of American Indians and their concomitant distillation of individual tribal characteristics into one pan-Indian consciousness."

Awards and honors
1992
 National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship
1993
 PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Book of Fiction for the story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven1994
 Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award
1996
 American Book Award (Before Columbus Foundation) for Reservation Blues Granta Magazine: Twenty Best American Novelists Under the Age of 40
 New York Times Notable Book for Indian Killer People Magazine: Best of Pages
1999
 The New Yorker: 20 Writers for the 21st Century
2001
PEN/Malamud Award
2007
 National Book Award, Young People's Literature, for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian2009
 American Library Association Odyssey Award as the year's "best audiobook for children or young adults", read by Alexie (Frederick, MD: Recorded Books, LLC, 2008, )
2010
 PEN/Faulkner Award for War Dances Native Writers' Circle of the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award
 Puterbaugh Award ", the first American Puterbaugh fellow
 California Young Reader Medal for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian2013
The John Dos Passos Prize for Literature 

See also

List of writers from peoples indigenous to the Americas
Louise Erdrich
Native American Renaissance
Native American studies
There There (novel)

References

Other sources
 Alexie, Sherman; Bill Clinton and Jim Lehrer. "A Dialogue on Race with President Clinton". News Hour. July 9, 1998.
 Nygren, Åse. "A World of Story-Smoke: A Conversation with Sherman Alexie." MELUS 30.4 (Winter 2005): 149–69.
 West, Dennis, and Joan M. West. ""Sending Cinematic Smoke Signals: An Interview with Sherman Alexie". Cineaste 23.4 (Fall 1998): 29–33.

External links and further reading

 Western American Literature Journal: Sherman Alexie
 
 
 
 Voice of the New Tribes article by Duncan Campbell in "The Guardian" January 3, 2003
 Sherman Alexie's poem "Punch" in Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts (24.1).
 Berglund, Jeff and Jan Roush, eds. Sherman Alexie: A Collection of Critical Essays, (2010) .
 
 
Sherman Alexie's heartbreaking reason for pausing his book tour - via KUOW News and Information
Interviews
 "Sherman Alexie" by Robert Capriccioso, Identity Theory, published March 23, 2003
 "Sherman Alexie" by Joelle Fraser, Iowa Review, copyright 2001
 "Northwest Passages: Sherman Alexie" by Emily Harris, Think Out Loud, Oregon Public Broadcasting, broadcast October 8, 2009
  "Interview With Sherman Alexie" as 2007 National Book Award winner, by Rita Williams-Garcia
 "No More Playing Dead for American Indian Filmmaker Sherman Alexie" by Rita Kempley, The Washington Post'', July 3, 1998
 "Sherman Alexie on Living Outside Cultural Borders" by Bill Moyers, broadcast April 12, 2013 – with "Dig Deeper" on Alexie's life, work, and influence

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Asiniiwin, translated Rocky Boy or Stone Child, was an important Chippewa leader who was chief of a band in Montana in the late 19th century and early 20th century. His advocacy for his people helped gain the establishment of what is called Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation in his honor. Formed from part of Fort Assiniboine, which was closed, it is located in Hill and Chouteau counties in north central Montana.

Early life
Not much is known about Asiniiwin's early life. Some speculate he was born and raised in Wisconsin, and migrated to the Montana region later on, as did many Chippewa. However, written historical records prove he was a native to Montana.  He told a companion he was Chippewa and born somewhere between Anaconda, Butte, and Deer Lodge. He was the son of Chief Bobtail aka Alexis Piche Bobtail. His birth date was probably in either 1851 or 1852. Little is known about him in his early life.

Rise to power
In the 1880s, the Montana Chippewa and Cree, were without treaty or land. Thomas Little Shell was possibly the dominant Chippewa leader in Montana during that time. Little Shell owned land near where present-day Plentywood, Montana is located. Little Shell negotiated with representatives of the United States, about ceding land in North Dakota. 

Rocky Boy lived primarily in southwestern and western Montana. He was fond of the Great Falls, Montana region. When Little Shell passed on in 1901, Rocky Boy became well received by the United States.

Rocky Boy led a band of about 130 men, women and children. Other Chippewa had settled on reservations of other tribes. He worked to keep the Chippewa tribal identity alive in Montana, at a time when more whites were settling the land, and expected the Indians to disappear.

Sub-chiefs
Rocky Boy was the principal leader of the Montana Chippewa people. Other leaders who followed or worked with Rocky Boy were located around Montana. Some lived on other Montana reservations and tried to get the Ojibwa of those Montana reservations tribal recognition within these locations.

Little Bear was a principal leader of some Cree people in western Canada, leading them to Montana as refugees after Riel's Rebellion. 
Buffalo Coat was an important Chippewa leader in the Great Falls region, including the regions around Fort Shaw, Montana and to Fort Benton, Montana. In 1898 he asked for land and citizenship for the landless Chippewa in the Great Falls region. The United States refused to grant Buffalo Coat's people land and citizenship. The United States claimed they had no jurisdiction and, thus, were not capable of granting Buffalo Coat any land.
Ka-na-bay-zhic-um, or Long Hair, was the chief of the landless Chippewa who lived near the Marias River, which is located north of Great Falls near present-day Loma, Montana and Fort Benton. It includes land near the Blackfeet Indian Reservation and the Sweet Grass Hills.
Kah-keesh-ka-wash-chah-bay-wo was the principal leader of the landless Chippewas on the Crow-Northern Cheyenne Reservation and the immediate region around the Billings, Montana region. He may have played a role in the attempt by the Cheyenne to break off the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in 1897.
Lucky Man was affiliated with Little Bear. He was probably native to western Montana or north central Montana. He fled up to Alberta and Saskatchewan around the time of the 1877 Nez Perce exodus with Little Bear. He returned to Montana with Little Bear.

Many others, including Rain of the Bow, Mah-chop, Pay-pah-mi-show-ait, and Nan-ome-sha, were also sub-chiefs. Each man led anywhere from 25 to 200 or more landless Chippewa, in Montana, Idaho and elsewhere. Each of them kept in contact with Rocky Boy to learn of any news of the establishment of new Chippewa Reservations. Their goal was to keep the Chippewa tribal identity alive.

Struggle for a Chippewa Reservation
Soon after Little Shell passed on or probably well before, Rocky Boy was sought after by both the Chippewas and the United States. Rocky Boy may have become an important Chippewa leader in Montana after Little Shell was forced off Reservation rolls in 1891. Rocky Boy was inclined towards the peace path and cooperation. He was well liked.

Rocky Boy could travel the following railroads for free: B.A. & P; Oregon Short Line; Rio Grande Western; and Southern Pacific Railroad. Rocky Boy had letters of recommendation from the governor of Idaho, as well as an Idaho District Judge, and several affluent citizens of Pocatello, which is next to the Fort Hall Reservation. He also had many letters of recommendation from many affluent people from Utah. He was obviously sought after in those locations to help the Chippewa living there, relocate to reservations.

In 1902, Rocky Boy commenced negotiating for a new Chippewa Reservation in Montana. He had several supporters among the whites, including Senator Dixon. Rocky Boy sent a letter to the President of the United States requesting a reservation. His goal was to establish a reservation for the landless Chippewa of southwestern and western Montana, as well as those Chippewa living on the Coeur d'Alene Reservation and Flathead Reservation, who wanted to relocate to the new Chippewa Reservation. With the help of Senator Dixon who spoke on his behalf and several other affluent Montana citizens, Rocky Boy commenced the struggle to find a Chippewa Reservation in Montana.

Proposed 1904 Flathead Reservation
In 1904, the government of the United States debated over finding a home for the Chippewa of Montana on the Flathead Reservation, but the bill was not ratified. Rocky Boy was obviously upset about the failure and those Chippewa living on the Flathead Reservation, even more so. They would continue to live on the Flathead Reservation as Rocky Boy continued the quest to find a new Reservation for the landless Chippewa of Montana. The Chippewa of the Flathead Reservation were not the only tribe to be forced by the United States to assimilate among the Kootenai and Salish, so were the Nez Perce. Though the attempt by Rocky Boy to preserve the Chippewa Tribal Status on the Flathead Reservation failed, today over 100 Chippewa are still clinging to their Anishinabe identity on the Flathead Reservation.

The 1908 Swan Valley Massacre
In late 1908, the United States learned that small groups of Chippewa living on the Flathead Reservation had left the Reservation to hunt in the adjoining Swan Valley. In response, the United States sent a game warden and several deputized citizens, to the Swan Valley to find the hunters. They found one small group and requested from them, their hunting licenses which they provided. Though they had legal permission to hunt, the game warden told them he would return the next day and if they had not left the Swan Valley they would be arrested. He returned the next day shooting instead of negotiating. In the battle that followed 4 Chippewa were killed and the game warden also. To ease the unrest the Chippewa felt about the Land Acts to open up the Flathead and Fort Peck Reservations to white settlement, the United States sent Indian Inspector Frank Churchill to Montana to negotiate with Rocky Boy in the same said year of 1908.

The Valley County, Montana Chippewa Reservation
In 1908, Frank Churchill met and negotiated with Rocky Boy. Rocky Boy told him that Chippewa were living all over Montana including on the Blackfeet Reservation, Crow Reservation, Fort Peck Reservation,  and the Flathead Reservation, and near white settlements such as Anaconda, Billings, Butte, Deer Lodge, Garrison (Ulm), Havre, Glasgow, Great Falls, Helena, Missoula and many others. In an attempt to ease the fears of the Chippewa of western Montana and Idaho (Coeur d'Alene Reservation and the defunct Lemhi Reservation), Churchill requested from the government of the United States that all of Valley County, Montana be withdrawn from white settlement and a new Chippewa Reservation be set aside in the same said county, covering near 1.4 million acres. Both requests were granted. However, many of the Chippewa from western Montana and Idaho (Coeur d'Alene Reservation and the Lemhi Reservation), were not willing to make the journey and they were charged high rates by railroad owners apparently and that ended that quest. Churchill knew the problem was not over.

The relocation to the Blackfeet Reservation
Representatives from the United States continued to negotiate with Rocky Boy after the Valley County, Montana Chippewa Reservation quest. Many Chippewas were still landless and living near many white settlements and on the Coeur d'Alene Reservation and Flathead Reservation. Many were also living on the Blackfeet Reservation. In 1909, Rocky Boy reached an agreement with the United States for a new home for the landless Chippewa from western Montana and Idaho, on the Blackfeet Reservation, between St. Mary, Babb, and the Canada–US border.

They were relocated there in November 1909. Many did not like it and commenced to leave the Blackfeet Reservation. However, Rocky Boy remained with about 50 Chippewa. The present-day Indians who live between St. Mary and Babb, are descended from the 50 or so Chippewa who remained. They have, however, been forced by the United States to lose their Chippewa Tribal identity. They know not who they are.

The establishment of the Rocky Boy Reservation
Many Chippewas and the Cree under Little Bear's leadership were still landless in 1910. Little Bear had no choice but to follow Rocky Boy as a result of the US Government's decision he and his subjects were Canadian Cree. Many Chippewa living on the Coeur d'Alene Reservation and Flathead Reservation continued to keep in contact with both Rocky Boy and Little Bear, as they continued the quest to find a reservation in Montana. Finally in 1916, the United States established the Rocky Boy Reservation. Rocky Boy did not live to see the establishment of the joint Chippewa-Cree Reservation. Many claim he was assassinated. After news of the establishment of the new reservation was learned of by the landless Chippewa and Cree, they commenced to relocate to the new Reservation.

The exodus to Great Falls
After either being forced off of Rocky Boy Reservation rolls or just leaving on their own, the nearly 100 Chippewas who lived on the Rocky Boy Reservation, relocated to Hill 57 in Great Falls. Their reason for the exodus was probably over Nationality. Well over 600 Indians were led by Rocky Boy his sub-chiefs. The Rocky Boy Reservation's tentative roll was sent to the government of the United States, and they abruptly removed over 200 names. The goal for the Chippewa Reservation was to keep the Chippewa tribal identity alive in Montana. When the news that the Cree and the Metis made up the majority (they claim it is now 90%) of Rocky Boy Reservation's population, the Chippewa knew they had been deceived.

As mentioned, near 100 fled to Hill 57. They did so to keep their Nationality alive, though the whites claim these people were Cree, Metis and Chippewa. This issue is ongoing. Today, they are either the non federally recognized Ahontoay or the non federally recognized Swan Creek and Black River Chippewas. They are Landless Chippewa and landless because the United States will not recognize their Nationality, or the United States will not grant the Montana Chippewa a Chippewa Reservation.

One group is known as the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians and the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians of Montana have state recognition as a tribe by the State of Montana, though their quest for federal recognition remains unsuccessful.

Death
Between 1900 and 1910, a period of great unrest occurred in Montana and the rest of the western United States, as the Land Acts took effect and Reservations were opened up to white settlement. Rocky Boy was instrumental in keeping the peace. That may likely be his main legacy. He died on April 18, 1916 at the age of 64 or 65.

References

External links
Rocky Boy Reservation History
Rocky Boy's Plight
Rocky Boy's Travels
Cree Village

1850s births
1916 deaths
Ojibwe in Montana
Ojibwe people The Rincon Band of Luiseño Indians are a federally recognized tribe of Luiseño who live on the Rincon Indian Reservation in the Valley Center CDP, San Diego County, California. It is one of six such tribes in Southern California that are composed of Luiseño people. The Luiseño are considered one of the groups of the California Mission Indians.

The band developed the Harrah's Resort Southern California (previously known as Harrah's Rincon Resort and Casino) that is located on the reservation, as well as Rincon Reservation Road Brewery, the first tribally-owned craft brewery in Southern California. The tribe is a member of the Indian Health Council, which runs a health clinic on the reservation, adjacent to the casino.

Reservation
Rincon Indian Reservation lies in northeastern San Diego County, along the San Luis Rey River. The reservation was established in 1875, near the

Payomkawichum village of Wáșxa.

California State Route 76 was constructed north of the reservation. The total area of the reservation is .

The population on the reservation is around 1,500. In the 2010 census, 188 people in the Valley Center CDP (census-designated place) self-identified as Native Americans. Tribal enrollment is about 651.

See also
 Rincon, California

Notes

References
Bean, Lowell J. and Shipek, Florence C. (1978) "Luiseño," in 'California,' vol. 8, ed. Robert Heizer, Handbook of North American Indians (Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution): 550–563.

External links
 Rincon Band of Luiseño Indians tribal government homepage
 

Luiseño
California Mission Indians
Native American tribes in California
Federally recognized tribes in the United States
Native American tribes in San Diego County, California