Sherman Alexie is a poet, filmmaker, and award-winning author.
His new children's book, Thunder Boy Jr., comes out in May.
He also wrote the screenplay for the movie Smoke Signals.
It was based on a short story from his book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.
And on a recent episode of BuzzFeed's podcast The Tell Show, he told us a story about being a lactose intolerant cheese-lover.
He told us that lactose intolerance can be a complicated issue for Native Americans.
"To admit that you're lactose intolerant as a Native American, then you have to delve into the politics of saying that we're descended from Asian folks," Alexie says. "Because one of the arguments for Natives against colonialism is that not only that we were here first, but that we were created here. So we have this original relationship with the land that nobody else has. But if you admit you're lactose intolerant, you're putting in that small doubt that we just got here first, and getting here first doesn't have the same political power as saying we've always been here."
Then he told us the story of how he got "cheese sober".
