Aging & Wisdom Quote by Tony Hillerman

Hillerman is doing something deftly political while sounding almost casual: he’s normalizing a world that mainstream American readers have been trained to treat as “local color.” The word “exotic” is the tell. It marks the gaze he’s pushing against - the outsider’s habit of turning Indigenous life into scenery, a tourist’s backdrop for mystery plots and moral lessons. Hillerman acknowledges that gaze exists, then refuses to perform it. “Not for me” isn’t a brag; it’s a line in the sand about point of view.

The little scene at the trading post works because it’s anti-spectacle. No dramatic ceremony, no mythic desert grandeur, just “a few elderly Navajos sitting on a bench.” It’s quotidian, which is precisely the point: Indigeneity as everyday presence rather than narrative ornament. And by placing himself in the moment - “I pulled up” - he’s also reminding you that belonging is practiced, not inherited. He isn’t claiming Navajo identity; he’s claiming familiarity, the earned comfort of someone who has spent time listening, watching, returning.

Context matters here. Hillerman’s Leaphorn and Chee novels helped popularize the Navajo Nation as a setting for crime fiction in the late 20th century, a time when publishing often treated Native communities as either invisible or romanticized. This quote reads like a preemptive defense: yes, the material may feel “exotic” to you, but that’s your cultural distance showing. The invitation is subtle and slightly accusatory - come closer, drop the binoculars, and stop mistaking your ignorance for their strangeness.