The services that the government provides to Indians might be likened to rent. The rent for use of the entire country of the United States.

They both started laughing in that desperate high-pitched way people laugh when their hearts are broken.

When Thomas thought of his father, peace stole across his chest and covered him like sunlight.

Zhaanat’s knowledge was considered so important that she had been fiercely hidden away, guarded from going to boarding school. She had barely learned to read and write on the intermittent days she had attended reservation day school. She made baskets and beadwork to sell. But Zhaanat’s real job was passing on what she knew.

How sad it was not to be sad.

Maybe he’d loved his father. Or maybe he thought he should love his father.

And he knew thinking this far ahead was useless and ridiculous, but his mind had seized its own irrational path and would not be controlled by logic. He couldn’t argue himself into sleep.

if you should ever doubt that a series of dry words in a government document can shatter spirits and demolish lives, let this book erase that doubt.

the author of the proposal had constructed a cloud of lofty words around this bill—emancipation, freedom, equality, success—that disguised its truth: termination. Termination. Missing only the prefix. The ex.