Not Enough Indians
by Harry Shearer
I don't have to prove to you that being good at sketch comedy and voiceover work doesn't mean you can write. Just read a chapter or two of The Shroud of the Thwacker, I mean if you can stand to.
Not Enough Indians is the other side of the coin. You can read and enjoy this medium-short comic novel, appreciate the grace of the writing, and jump a little jump at the snapper ending.
The whole gang down at Halliburton knows that action by the government can create both value and cash flow, but not everybody perceives all the spheres where the rule applies. The people of Gammage, New York, discover one. Their town stands where the Filaquonsett Indians used to live, but that was a good long time ago. Now Gammage, like many another little burg, has come on hard times; the last straw for the highly vocal residents is a proposed new garbage tax. Desperate citizens suggest opening an Indian casino to create jobs and push up land values. The catch is that the town has no Indians.
It happens that the Bureau of Indian Affairs needs to move some paper, and Gammage's application slides to the top of the inbox. Recognition as a sovereign tribe comes with a price: Re-heritaging means the people have to take new names, learn some dances and legends (from Anna Manybirds, a Tlingit from Alaska) and rechristen their main street Wisdom of the Ancestors Boulevard. But the casino is an instant success.
Any successful business draws competition, and there's the Menace in the treatment, and if I told you any more you'd enjoy reading the book less. Not Enough Indians is not a paradigm-shifting novel, but it's a fine, light comic tale related with great skill.
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Not Enough Indians