Robert Arthur Alexie is a Canadian First Nations

First Nations

First Nations is a term that collectively refers to various Aboriginal peoples in Canada who are neither Inuit nor Métis. There are currently over 630 recognised First Nations governments or bands spread across Canada, roughly half of which are in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia. The...

 novelist.
Alexie was born in Fort McPherson

Fort McPherson

Fort McPherson was a U.S. Army military base located in East Point, Georgia, on the southwest edge of the City of Atlanta, Ga. It was the headquarters for the U.S. Army Installation Management Command, Southeast Region; the U.S. Army Forces Command; the U.S. Army Reserve Command; the U.S...

, Northwest Territories

Northwest Territories

The Northwest Territories is a federal territory of Canada.Located in northern Canada, the territory borders Canada's two other territories, Yukon to the west and Nunavut to the east, and three provinces: British Columbia to the southwest, and Alberta and Saskatchewan to the south...

 and now lives in Inuvik. He served as Tribal chief

Tribal chief

A tribal chief is the leader of a tribal society or chiefdom. Tribal societies with social stratification under a single leader emerged in the Neolithic period out of earlier tribal structures with little stratification, and they remained prevalent throughout the Iron Age.In the case of ...

 of the Tetlit Gwich'in of Fort McPherson and also served as the vice president of the Gwich'in Tribal Council

Tribal Council

A Tribal Council is either: an association of Native American bands in the United States or First Nations governments in Canada, or the governing body for certain tribes within the United States or elsewhere...

 for two terms, helping achieve a land claims

Land claims

Land claims are a legal declaration of desired control over areas of property including bodies of water. The phrase is usually only used with respect to disputed or unresolved land claims...

 agreement. http://www.theytus.com/Contributors/Robert-Arthur-Alexie

Porcupines and China Dolls

His first novel, Porcupines and China Dolls (published in 2002) examines the lives of students forced into the Canadian Indian residential school system  http://www.richardvancamp.org/writing/Porcupines.html and the ensuing intergenerational or Historical trauma

Historical Trauma

Historical trauma is cumulative emotional and psychological wounding, over the lifespan and across generations, emanating from massive group trauma experiences. The historical trauma response is a constellation of features in reaction to this trauma....

 for them and their families..

Thomas King explains the novel's title in The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative: "the girls had been scrubbed and powdered to look like china dolls and the boys had been scrubbed and sheared to look like porcupines" One of the lines from which the title draws its name comes from Alexie writing, "No one heard the little china doll that night, but if she were given a voice, it would've sounded like a million porcupines screaming in the dark."

Author of The Lesser Blessed, Richard Van Camp's review of Porcupines and China Dolls suggests, "[t]his book will initiate more healing than any of us will ever know. It's hard but good medicine."

King also indicates that Alexie—alongside Eden Robinson

Eden Robinson

Eden Victoria Lena Robinson is a Canadian novelist and short story writer.Born in Kitamaat, British Columbia, she is a member of the Haisla and Heiltsuk First Nations...

, Harry Robinson and Ruby Slipperjack

Ruby Slipperjack

Ruby Slipperjack, known also as Ruby Slipperjack-Farrell is an Ojibwe writer and painter. Her work discusses traditional religious and social customs of the Ojibwe in northern Ontario, as well as the incursion of modernity on their culture....

— creates "fictions... primarily for a Native audience, making a conscious decision not so much to ignore non-Native readers as to write for the very people they write about", suggesting that the text does not provide enough of a debriefing for a non-Native audience to understand its weight historically.

The Pale Indian

Alexie's sophomore novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

, The Pale Indian (published in 2005), offers perhaps an even less clear historical debriefing than its predecessor, confirming King's suspicions about intended audience. The Pale Indian takes place in the 1980s and surround's a young man's return to his northern community after being raised in Calgary

Calgary

Calgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...

 by an adoptive white family. The novel is both a love story and a tragedy. The Pale Indian is full of energetic sex and humour that provide respite from some of the more serious issues that the novel confronts.

The Pale Indian has been referred to as "a novel of secrets, lies, and madness written with power and eloquence".