Native Tributes. Gerald Vizenor

was a reservation of newcomers with no sense of chance or easy way to portray the contortions of empires, the brokers of democracy, and the native humor of poverty. The hand puppets were ready to treat and tease the children, but the elders were more prepared for vaudeville, popular songs, and crappy public poetry, than spirited puppet shows. The notable exception, we learned much later, was the grand Modicut Yiddish puppet theater created by Zuni Maud and Yosi Cutler in New York City.

      Plucky was out of tune in the very city that was built with the white pine cut from the forests on the White Earth Reservation. He never attended a reservation government school, and his easy gestures were romantic, but mostly with a sense of irony.