Issue 524 | The Sun Magazine

August 2019

Readers Write

Childhood

Flunking a driver’s test, frightening a bully, grown up at fourteen

By Our Readers
One Nation, Indivisible

August 2019

Featuring Tim Wise, Vine Deloria Jr., Sun Bear, and more.

The Dog-Eared Page

from Dwellings

The whole world was a nest on its humble tilt, in the maze of the universe, holding us.

By Linda Hogan
Quotations

Sunbeams

Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. . . . We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it.

Martin Luther King Jr.

The Sun Interview

Our Fellow Americans

Paul Chaat Smith On The Complex Truth Of Native American History

To see the full picture of Indians — as people who have had a continuing, complex relationship with all aspects of American culture — is just too much for some people. They want to put Indians in a box.

By Mark Leviton
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

First Place

Three months before his third birthday, his Italian grandfather (on his mother’s side) set him on a proper bicycle, pushed him forward, and shouted, “Spingi, spingi, spingi!” Just like that, he rode down the driveway.

By Kelly Daniels
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Geronimo’s Cadillac

I suggest that a powerful antidote to the manufactured past now being created for us is the secret history of Indians in the twentieth century. Geronimo really did have a Cadillac and used to drive it to church, where he’d sign autographs.

By Paul Chaat Smith
Fiction

Drowning For Beginners

Upon arriving at the bungalow, he learned something else about himself: if there was a 5 percent chance that fucking his ex-wife’s hairdresser might kill him, he was perfectly willing to take that risk.

By Boomer Pinches
Photography

On The Shore

I could never stay long enough on the shore; the tang of the untainted, fresh, and free sea air was like a cool, quieting thought.

Helen Keller

Poetry

Climate Change

That the sun would burn out — / even a million years from now — / was the worst news of my childhood.

By Elizabeth Poliner