Ketteler has taught literature and composition and has studied Native American literature. In this essay, she discusses the ways in which Wendy Rose's poem "For the White poets who would be Indian" is a response to her white peers, who appropriate Native American culture for the sake of their art. It looks at the cultural context for such appropriation and the ways popular culture has responded to and stereotyped Indians for centuries.

In the poem, "For the White poets who would be Indians," Wendy Rose responds to white America's appropriation of Native American culture. Specifically, she is addressing white poets who want to take part of Native American culture and make it their own for the sake of art. As a woman with both European and Indian ancestry, Rose is caught between the white world and the Indian world, between English language and Native traditions. She struggles...