Indian Killer

Truck Schultz is a popular, ultra-conservative talk-radio host. He smokes his cigar and announces that his police sources have revealed that the scalped and mutilated body of a white man has been discovered. He says that the evidence suggests an Indian committed the crime and that, while the police will not tell him what the evidence is, they “did make it clear that only an Indian, or a person intimately familiar with Indian culture, would know to leave such evidence behind” (56).

Marie attends the first session of Introduction to Native American Literature. She is the only Indian student. The other students are discussing how the recent murder victim was scalped and associating this with Indians. Marie explains that Indians learned scalping from the French colonizers, but when they realize that she is Indian, the white students ignore her. The curriculum is filled with books written or edited by white people, supposed autobiographies from Indians that were co-written by white people, and texts by white people who claim to be Indian.

The lecturer, Dr. Clarence Mather, is also white, and Marie has been warned that he is “a Wannabe Indian” who wants to share in Indian culture and is obsessed with his own image of what an Indian is (58).