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Over the course of the previous decade, my work for The Circle, Indian Country Today, the Sicangu Sun-Times, and other Native publications had led me to places and provided me with experiences accessible to few white people. I had met and befriended Native elders and philosophers, professors and activists, medicine men and political leaders. I had participated in Lakota ceremonies and learned from ordinary tribal citizens in cities and on reservations, from Rosebud to Pine Ridge, and from Arctic Village to White Earth, Upper and Lower Sioux, Isleta Pueblo, Bad River, and many others. These experiences had taken me far from my upbringing in a conservative Jewish household in Minneapolis, fulfilling in many ways what I longed for as a young man: to live a deeply meaningful life connected with the land of my birth. I had also come to understand the extent to which mainstream Americans were beneficiaries of the genocide of indigenous peoples, and it didn’t sit well with me. It never had, even when I was too young to know why.