I knew from a young age that I wanted to be an actor. I never even thought about other careers. The acting field is certainly not the path many Indian parents encourage their children to take but mine were very supportive. They wanted me to have an education but understood that this is what I wanted to do.

Most Indians go into education. Their parents just push them into education like parents in Australia push them into sports.

In the government schools which are referred to as public schools Indian policy has been instituted there and its a policy where they do not encourage in fact discourage critical thinking and the creation of ideas and public education.

The way to kill a man or a nation is to cut off his dreams the way the whites are taking care of the Indians: killing their dreams their magic their familiar spirits.

My mom grew up in Kansas my dad in Indiana. They had boring childhoods.

Indians mock their corrupt politicians relentlessly but they regard their honest politicians with silent suspicion. The first thing they do when they hear of a supposedly 'clean' politician is to grin. It is a cliche that honest politicians in India tend to have dishonest sons who collect money from people seeking an audience with Dad.

My dad's whole family is in Madras and I was born in America so we didn't have that big Indian community. I don't really have anything interesting to say about it. When I talk about it people are like 'meh let's talk about something else.'

They used to say it was bad for Indians to drink but it's bad for anybody. When they drink they lose their cool a lot of us. Like when we played with Sonny Boy I would never get paid you know. He would drink up all the money.

But every great scripture whether Hebrew Indian Persian or Chinese apart from its religious value will be found to have some rare and special beauty of its own and in this respect the original Bible stands very high as a monument of sublime poetry and of artistic prose.

The townspeople outside the reservations had a very superior attitude toward Indians which was kind of funny because they weren't very wealthy they were on the fringes of society themselves.

In high school I dated a white woman. She would come to visit me on the rez. And her dad who was very racist didn't like that at all. And he told her one time 'You shouldn't go on the rez if you're white because Indians have a lot of anger in their heart.'

I am aware that in presenting myself as the advocate of the Indians and their rights I shall stand very much alone.