Sherman Alexie is one of the best known Native American writers today. He started his famous career with poetry and then wrote several novels and collections of short stories. From one of his novels The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, we receive the short story “This is What it Means to Say Phoenix Arizona” which is also shown through the film Smoke Signals. Throughout this story, we get to see life on the reservation as a Native American. This might be foreign to much of the American population as the Native American culture was quite literally erased from history and the only time we saw them was in movies when they were being killed. Alexie does a good job depicting the life of his people through the realness of his writing from the alcoholism to the relationships on his reservations. Although the story uses Pathos to create relationships and Logos to describe his Native culture, “This is What it Means to Say Phoenix Arizona” is filled with Ethos which allows the audience to engage and relate with the content easily. The story begins with the disheartening news of the main character, Victor 's fathers ' death. At just a young age Victor 's father left him and his mother to Arizona where he ultimately died. .Outside of the text, Alexie 's father had actually passed away and with that, he was able to create a stronger connection with his audience. Personally, I have yet to experience the death of someone close to me but through his writing, I felt like I had just