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A single voice of integrity can be a window into many worlds. Lately Long Soldier is a writer, a mother, a citizen of the United States, and a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation.

She has a way of opening up this part of her life and of American life to inspire self-searching and tenderness.

And I had no idea until I discovered Lately Long Soldier that the U.S. government offered an official apology to Native peoples in 2009.

But it was done so quietly with no ceremony that it was practically a secret.

Lately Long Soldier's lyrical first book, Where As, explores the freedom real apologies can bring and offers entry points for us all to histories that are not merely about the past.

All of them had to be within living memory. I really wanted it to be grounded in the now, at least within my own lifetime.

And I wanted as much as possible to avoid this sort of nostalgic portraiture of a Native life, my life.

I'm Christopher Tipett and this is on being.

Where As, received multiple awards, including the Whiting Award, and it was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Lately Long Soldier's mother was from Idaho and her father from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

She now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and we spoke in 2017.

A couple of years ago, I interviewed Sitting Bulls Great Grandson, Ernie LaPoint.

And it was as I was preparing for that interview that I first learned that it wasn't until 1978 that the American Indian Religious Freedom Act gave the Lakota and other tribes the right to perform their sacred rituals and ceremonies that these things had been decreed barbarous and demoralizing.

In 1883 in law. It occurs to me that you more or less grew up in the aftermath of that shift, although probably when it was still in transition, I'm just curious about that.

If that's something you are aware of.

Oh, yeah. It's definitely something I've been aware of.

I can't speak for all of my generation and I cannot speak for all Lakota people.

So I have Lakota family who is Christian.

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