. >> thank you very much, i'm gary japson, president of the history museum, and with us is alison owings, i understand van voices, listening to native americans. we meet a wide array of people and hear them discussing their own lives. alison, please begin the conversation. >> thank you very much, gary, and also thank you to the chicago lit fest. i'm very happy to be here. i think that i wrote this book initially because i was apolled by the ignorance of non-native people about native people, including myself so i therefore set out to find what i could to destereo type what i find as a bad problem for centuries and it continues today, and initially, my idea was well, i will just talk to a few native people and find out what they had to say about their own lives, and then the book became stronger and stronger really, far reaching, and i ended up interviewing the indians of maine to the last chapters of the hawaii yap chanter. my object was to destereo type people thinking this would be helpful because native americans in my opinion are still harmed by the steer your tines -- stereotypes ab