March 26, 2007

Alexie wows film fest

Alexie stands tall at Native film eventRemember this name: Sherman Alexie.

He was the keynote speaker at last week's Native American Film Fest Gala, and I have never been so impressed by an "insightful comic" since the first time I saw Lily Tomlin in the early 1980s.

Speaking without notes or hesitation, Alexie took the nearly 350 guests on a Space Mountain ride of laughs, nostalgia, empathy, awakening--and more laughs.

He spoke of his ethnic background as a Spokane/Coer d'Alene American Indian ("with a little white mixed in, but we don't talk about that") growing up on the Spokane (Washington) Indian Reservation "in a first generation HUD House."

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