gary johnson, president of the chicago history museum and with us today is our guest author, allison owenings. her latest book is "indian voices: listening to native americans." in her book, we meet a wide array of native people and we hear them discussing their own lives. so, allison, please begin the conversation. >> thank you very much, gary. and thank you also for the chicago litfest. i'm really happy to be here. i think that i wrote this book initially because i was so appalled by the ignorance of nonnative people about native people including myself. and i, therefore, set out what i could to destereotype what i find is really a bad bob. it's been 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 about their own lives and the book became stronger, stronger, far-reaching and i ended up interviewing the indians of maybe mccain to the last chapters of a hawaiian chanter. and my object at the time was to destereotype thinking it would be helpful because native americans, in my opinion, are s