"Just like with any culture, to understand Natives, a person must understand those queer, quirky cultural institutions.

In the past month, we’ve been doing the pow-wow/see-family thing really heavy every weekend.

One thing that happens when you go to a lot of different reservations is that you begin to compare and contrast differences. Sometimes there’s not a whole bunch to do, so you begin to compare minutiae—Indian I-Spy. “Oh, this reservation has 16 more outhouses than the last one.” or “I’ve seen an entire 4 white people here today.” Cool game—I’m thinking about packaging it up and trying to sell it.

One game that we also enjoy playing is “Rez Dog Quizzo.” Before I discuss much of the details of the game, let me first say that I unabashedly love wild rez dogs. See, we grew up with rez dogs our whole life—in recent times, I actually got a dog that was only one breed, and that almost got me disowned from my family. We enjoy not being able to explain the many components and breeds that went into the dog, and thus the dog’s first name became all the explanation that it needed. Like Madonna."

Get the Story:
Gyasi Ross: Why Rez Dogs Will Rule the World, ‘Planet of the Apes’ Style (Indian Country Today 7/15)

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