W. P. Kinsella is not an Indian, a fact that would not be extraordinary were it not for the stories Kinsella writes about the Cree Silas Ermineskin; and his sister Illiana, who moved to the city and married a very straight white man; and his friend Frank Fencepost; and the medicine lady, Mad Etta, who wears dresses made from five flour sacks, with ermine tails fastened along the sleeves, and the rest of a Cree world. Kinsella's Indians are counterculture figures in the sense that their lives counter the predominant culture of North America, but there is none of the worshipfully inaccurate portrayal of "the Indian" that has appeared from James Fenimore Cooper through Gary Snyder. Kinsella writes about Indian men who get drunk and beat their wives and children, women who run away to be prostitutes, an Indian used-car salesman who has an inside track on cheating...