Navahoax
Did a struggling white writer of gay erotica become one of multicultural literature's most celebrated memoirists ?- by passing himself off as Native American?
By MATTHEW FLEISCHER
Thursday, January 26, 2006 - 10:48 pm
So achingly honest it takes your breath away."
?-Miami Herald on The Boy and the Dog Are Sleeping
In June of 1999 a writer calling himself Nasdijj emerged from obscurity to publish an ode to his adopted son in Esquire. "My son is dead," he began. "I didn't say my adopted son is dead. He was my son. My son was a Navajo. He lived six years. They were the best six years of my life." ...
... The Esquire piece, as successful as it was heartbreaking, was a finalist for a National Magazine Award and helped establish Nasdijj as a prominent new voice in the world of nonfiction. "Esquire's Cinderella story," as Salon's Sean Elder called it, "arrived over the transom, addressed to no one in particular. ?'The cover letter was this screed about how Esquire had never published the work of an American-Indian writer and never would because it's such a racist publication,' recalls editor in chief David Granger. ?'And under it was... one of the most beautiful pieces of writing I'd ever read.' By the time the piece was published in the June issue, the writer (who lives on an Indian reservation) had a book contract."
The contract was for a full-length memoir, The Blood Runs Like A River Through My Dreams, published by Houghton Mifflin in 2000 to great acclaim. It was followed by two more memoirs, The Boy and the Dog Are Sleeping (Ballantine, 2003), and Geronimo's Bones: A Memoir of My Brother and Me (Ballantine, 2004). As if losing a son was not enough, the memoirs portray a lifetime of suffering ...
... The Boy won a 2004 PEN/Beyond Margins Award and helped solidify Nasdijj's place as one of the most celebrated multicultural writers in American literature. But as his successes and literary credentials grew in number so did his skeptics ?- particularly from within the Native American community. Sherman Alexie first heard of Nasdijj in 1999 after his former editor sent him a galley proof of The Blood for comment. At the time, Alexie, who is Spokane and Coeur d'Alene, was one of the hottest authors in America and was widely considered the most prominent voice in Native American literature. His novel Indian Killer was a New York Times notable book, and his cinematic feature Smoke Signals was the previous year's Sundance darling, nominated for the Grand Jury Prize and winner of the Audience Award. Alexie's seal of approval would have provided The Blood with a virtual rubber stamp of native authenticity. But it took Alexie only a few pages before he realized he couldn't vouch for the work. It wasn't just that similar writing style and cadence that bothered Alexie.
"The whole time I was reading I was thinking, this doesn't just sound like me, this is me," he says.
Alexie was born hydrocephalic, a life-threatening condition characterized by water on the brain. At the age of 6 months he underwent brain surgery that saved his life but left him, much like Tommy Nothing Fancy, prone to chronic seizures throughout his childhood. Instead of identifying with Nasdijj's story, however, Alexie became suspicious.
"At first I was flattered but as I kept reading I noticed he was borrowing from other Native writers too. I thought, this can't be real."
Indeed, Nasdijj's stories also bear uncanny resemblance to the works of N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Silko and especially Michael Dorris, whose memoir The Broken Cord depicts his struggle to care for his adopted FAS-stricken Native Alaskan children. Although there was never more than a similar phrase here and there, Alexie was convinced that the work was fabricated ...
... There is a Chinese proverb: How is it that a toad this large comes to stand in front of me?
James Dowaliby can tell you. A former vice president of Paramount International Television Group, he decided to pick up a copy of The Boy after reading a review and noting it was about fatherhood, a topic Dowaliby considers too rare in publishing. A single father himself, Dowaliby was astonished by what he read: "I'd never seen a book that so articulated a father's love for his son." Dowaliby knew immediately that this was a film he wanted to make and after securing the rights to the book from Nasdijj he was able to bring FilmFour (the filmmaking arm of Channel 4 in the U.K.) into the project. By the end of 2004, a feature-length adaptation of The Boy was greenlighted for development.
After securing the film rights to The Boyand the Dog are Sleeping and negotiating the deal with FilmFour, in early 2004 Dowaliby was finally ready to get down to the business of making a movie with Nasdijj. What Dowaliby didn't know at the time was the controversy that nearly derailed his new partner's burgeoning career four years earlier.
When he received his galley copy of The Blood and determined the book was fraudulent, Sherman Alexie not only refused to blurb the book but openly accused Nasdijj of both manufacturing his identity and plagiarism at a private lunch with Nasdijj's editor, Anton Mueller. Alexie says he begged Mueller to reconsider releasing the book.
"I said, you're going to pay for this later ?- this is not real," Alexie says.
According to Alexie, however, Mueller was unmoved by their conversation. "Basically his attitude was that it's a great book and the art is more important than the truth."
By the time Dowaliby began trying to make a film version of The Boy, he was stuck with a giant toad standing in the road in front of him. Following a few weeks of discussions, FilmFour and Dowaliby agreed to solicit a prominent British screenwriter, who had previously scripted a film about Navajo code talkers, to adapt the book. The writer had spent significant time on the Navajo Nation researching his film and had acquired a great deal of knowledge and respect for the Navajo culture. Immediately after reading The Boy, however, he called Dowaliby with his concerns.
The writer pointed out several inconsistencies in Nasdijj's story that he found suspicious, particularly Nasdijj's mischaracterization of Navajo clanship. "What did I know about clanship?" says Dowaliby. "I had taken Nasdijj for his word."
For both creative and liability purposes, Dowaliby was already fact-checking the book and he promised the writer he would look into the matter further. Dowaliby then began the almost daily routine of trying to draw honest information from Nasdijj about his past. He had little success. Dowaliby needed specifics; Nasdijj gave him none ...
... The producer intensified his background check of Nasdijj and found out about the Alexie incident. His doubts grew, and Nasdijj's responses to his queries only raised more questions. As the deadline for hiring the writer neared, Dowaliby concluded that Nasdijj was either unable or unwilling to confirm the details necessary to back up the truth of his story. He briefly considered simply billing the project as "inspired by true events" or the weaker "based on the book by Nasdijj" and not offering it as true in any fashion. "But admitting it was fiction would have ruined the emotional truth ?- the core of the book."
Dowaliby refused to go forward with the film until he got answers. Nasdijj refused to speak with him, claiming that he had moved back to the Navajo reservation. Dowaliby did, however, get a response from Nasdijj's wife, Tina. Though Dowaliby will not repeat what they discussed in confidence, he admits that she came clean about a number of things. Shortly thereafter it became apparent to him "that this wasn't just a fraud against the intellectual community, but against the entire Navajo nation, and that Nasdijj needed to apologize."
Dowaliby then contacted FilmFour and told them the project needed to be dropped. "People like Nasdijj," he says, "can't exist without some sort of complicity." ...
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