Amber Blaeser-Wardzala’s Another Name for Red has some of the most harrowing fiction I’ve ever read. The hyper-sexualization of Native women is a blight woven into American culture, and a Native author allowing a female Anishinaabe protagonist to make reckless choices in this atmosphere feels revelatory. Blaeser-Wardzala shifts the onus of bad behavior where it belongs – on men.
Folks in NDN Country will love to see themselves in these pages; from stray dogs to rez nicknames to arguments over what it means that red is the only color spirits can see, Another Name for Red feels like home in a way very few books do. Non-Natives will love reading it for the same reason, catching a slice of rez life from an insider’s point of view. This literary thriller pulled me forward with one simple question: where is Oldest Sister?
Amber Blaeser-Wardzala and I communicated via email about the importance of Indigenous voices telling Indigenous stories, why Natives rarely focus on one art form, and how younger generations perceive old school representation like Dances with Wolves.
Our conversation below has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Aaron John Curtis: I’m Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk). The character names – Middle Sister, Youngest Daughter, Only Grandson – made me think of the specificity the Mohawk language applies to relations. Is that a nod to Anishinaabemowin language constructs? I’m wondering if they work in similar ways.
Amber Blaeser-Wardzala: It was definitely a nod to the Anishinaabemowin language constructs. There isn’t just a word for “sister.” With the language, you’re defined in relation to other people: for example, “nishiime” means “my younger sister” and “gishiime” means “your younger sister.” There’s always a possessive adjective, someone you’re in relationship to. I wanted that idea of interconnectedness to be present on the page with the ways characters are referred to.
AJC: This led to some great narrative payoffs, such as the first time Oldest Sister’s name came up, which gave me goosebumps (clearly I don’t read jacket copy until after I’m done with a book). Were these setups deliberate, or did you arrive at them during the editing process?
ABW: These were deliberate choices that happened naturally on the page, though I do believe where they got placed in the novel moved around throughout the process—my editor and I did a lot of rearranging of the chapters. I think the original reveal of Oldest Sister’s name happened in the flashback scene of her and Middle Sister’s last interaction. It wasn’t holding the emotional weight I wanted it to there, so I ended up moving it to where it is now.
AJC: Since Tyler Sheridan made Wind River, there’s been a spate of non-Natives using the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women /Person crisis as a backdrop in fiction. How do you feel seeing non-Native thriller writers using MMIW /MMIP storylines? Could you speak on the significance of your voice in this space as an Anishinaabe author?
ABW: It rubs me the wrong way. I feel like it can be done right by non-Native writers, but so often non-Native writers devolve the MMIP crisis into a backdrop, some “fun” fast paced plot that doesn’t actually engage with the crisis’s real-world consequences and realities. One of my goals with this book was to provide a face and intimate experience to the crisis, as it is so often reduced to just statistics (horrifying ones) or by-the-numbers plot. I wanted to think about the families, loved ones, and communities that are directly affected by the murder and disappearances of these Indigenous relatives.
AJC: Natives will recognize themselves in these pages, but you also have a savvy mix of education on issues which non-Native readers might not be familiar with. Do you mind if I ask who was the audience you envisioned while you were writing?
ABW: This was a question I thought a lot about, especially as I got further in the publication process. In all my writing, my primary audience is Native readers. However, I do want my writing to be accessible to a certain degree to non-Natives, and with this project in particular, one of my goals for it was to draw attention to this crisis. Therefore, I did mix in more educational aspects to spark interest and outrage in people who maybe didn’t know anything or knew very little about both the crisis and contemporary Indigenous people. But I also didn’t want it to come across that I was centering non-Natives so I worked hard to make those educational aspects feel natural to the narrator’s voice; this also led to cases where I refused to give context clues or translations for Anishinaabemowin or Native slang, because I couldn’t imagine a way of doing so that wouldn’t feel forced.
AJC: In addition to being a writer, you are a beadworker and jingle dress dancer. Most Natives I know or have met seem to be multi-hyphenates – blending prose with poetry, creating fashion and art, making film and music – not as side hobbies but as part of their artistic identity (Chelsea T Hicks, Julian Brave NoiseCat, Kinsale Drake, etc). Why do you think that is?
ABW: Storytelling expands outside just the written word, and I feel like a lot of Indigenous writers recognize that and celebrate it with their hyphenated artistic identities. I view beadwork as a form of storytelling. I find writing is emotionally taxing (in a rewarding way), but beadwork is emotionally filling. Continuing the traditional art feels like an active declaration of our survival, despite all the attempts to wipe us out.
AJC: Do beadwork and writing have anything in common, or are they completely separate disciplines?
ABW: They’re both detail-oriented art forms. You have to be aware of every word you write, every bead you choose. In beadwork, if you make a mistake, you need to catch it as soon as you make it. Otherwise, you have to accept that mistake and have it become part of the piece or you have to go back and undo everything you’ve done since you messed up. With writing, I feel similarly on a plot level. Once I make a choice for the plot, it is difficult to undo it, because everything ripples out from there. With both art forms, you have to be thinking ahead to the long-lasting effects of your choices on what you’re creating.
AJC: Your story “Collections” from Never Whistle at Night was great, standing out in what is a stand-out collection. Do you remember the seed of the idea?
ABW: I do! A writer friend of mine shared with me the open call for the anthology, and I spent the next month or so trying to spark an idea for it. I was staying with my uncle and auntie at White Earth for a couple of weeks, and one morning, I was drinking my tea and sitting in the living room looking at the deer heads and fish bodies on the walls when a part of my mind whispered, “Imagine how creepy this would be if they were human heads.” And the idea took off from there.
AJC: : I loved the argument between Middle Sister and Cassanova over Dances with Wolves. As a young voice in contemporary Native storytelling, is Dances with Wolves important representation or white savior nonsense?
ABW: It’s an important part of the story and the evolution of Indigenous representation. I feel like I can’t totally speak on this, because I wasn’t born at the time the film came out so I wasn’t able to experience that first instance of more well-rounded representation in the moment it appeared. By the time I came around and I was watching films, there were other movies that had built upon the foundation, like Smoke Signals, Dance Me Outside, and even the animated kid’s film Spirit which was my favorite movie as a kid (even though the white general should have died at the end). Those always spoke to me more, but my older cousins and my mom always had a fondness for Dances with Wolves. Now we’ve evolved even further where Reservation Dogs has such incredible, multi-faceted portrayals of Indigenous people in the 21st century. And not only that, but it’s a household name!
AJC: The scene where the family sees an Amber alert on TV is gutting. I don’t have a question here, just wanted to point out I’ve never read one like it and it made me think of Missing White Girl Syndrome in a way I never have.
ABW: I’m glad to hear it had the emotional impact I wanted it to. It felt like an important moment to have, because missing white women and girls nearly always get the media attention while Indigenous women and BIPOC women in general are more likely not to get covered. I wanted the reader to have to directly face that reality.
AJC: Given the shadow MMIW casts over Indian Country, seeing Middle Sister’s reckless choices feels like new territory. We understand Middle Sister’s behavior is fueled by grief and guilt, but it doesn’t make reading about it any less fraught. Did you intend Middle Sister as pushback against the “perfect victim” narrative, or an answer to messy white women in fiction?
ABW: It was pushback against the idea that women have to be faultless in order for people to feel bad for what happens to us. The first response is always to victim blame women—what was she wearing, had she been drinking, did she lead him on, did she explicitly say no, etc. With many MMIW cases, they’re disregarded because the women are un-housed, had alcohol or drug addictions, or were sex workers. I don’t think any of these things should disqualify these women from getting justice or for the public getting outraged at what happens to them. Just as I don’t think Oldest Sister should be blamed for having been drinking the night she vanished nor should Middle Sister be blamed for her reckless behavior caused by her emotional turmoil. Women—Native and non-Native—should be allowed to be human and make mistakes and bad choices, and still be seen as worthy of justice and not be blamed if men choose to do bad things to us.
AJC: Being a debut author is a whirlwind that can scatter your writing routine all to hell. Any tricks to keeping your process intact? Do you have ideas for what your next project might be?
ABW: I wish I had tricks! Between rounds of edits and copyedits for this book, I’ve been working on my next novel, and it was definitely a learning process for me to move from one project back into the other. I wrote Another Name for Red and my forthcoming short story collection, Deer Women, simultaneously, but I found that was easier because the short stories weren’t taking up as much space in my brain as two novels.
AJC: What didn’t I ask that you want to answer? This is your chance to go off.
ABW: I hope this book inspires people to go out and read more Indigenous writers! I wouldn’t be here if not for all the writers who came before me. A few of my favorites that I would love to plug are The Light People by Gordon Henry Jr., Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and Solar Storms by Linda Hoga.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Amber Blaeser-Wardzala is an Anishinaabe writer, beadwork artist, and jingle dress dancer. She is a first-degree descendant of White Earth Nation in Minnesota and grew up in southeastern Wisconsin. She received her MFA from Arizona State University and was the 2024-25 George Bennett Fellow at Phillips Exeter Academy. Her writing has appeared in Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, The Iowa Review, Joyland, Passages North, CRAFT, and others. She has received support from Storyknife Writers Retreat, Vermont Studio Center, the Hambidge Center, Ragdale Foundation, Write On Door County, the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands, the Virginia G. Piper Center, and the Women’s National Book Association. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Fiction at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio where she lives with her overactive dog, Fern.
ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER: Aaron John Curtis is the author of the USA Today Bestselling Old School Indian, which was long listed for the 2026 PEN Open Book Award, the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, and was a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize. Aaron is an enrolled member of the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe, which he’ll tell you is the white name for the American side of Akwesasne. The Boston Globe called him, “Your new literary obsession.” Old School Indian will be available in paperback on October 27th from Tin House Publishing.