ABOUT THE BOOK:
In commemoration of the centenary of the Wounded Knee Massacre, in 1990, my partner Nick and I installed a replica of a Lakota tipi in the center of Manhattan’s most prominent shantytown known as The Hill and lived there for almost three years, making theater and art. We dedicated the tipi “in remembrance of the lives lost in 1890, and in recognition of the sovereignty and dignity of the most disenfranchised and forgotten members of our society a century later.”

The Hill traces the steps of how a shantytown went from the anonymity of waist-high huts hidden in the weeds, to a tour-bus, school-group and celebrity stop; from addicts and recluses just getting by, to a drug supermarket; from a close-knit encampment, to a crime scene that entangles everyone from drug dealers, to users, to cops, to Nick and me… when one day tragedy strikes.