The novel’s forward is written by Joy Harjo, a renowned poet and author. Harjo is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and a founding member of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, as well as a two-time United States Poet Laureate. In the Foreword, Harjo establishes the climate surrounding Indigenous rights in the 1970s, when Winter in the Blood was published, explaining: “We asserted ourselves nationally as tribal nations, as cultural peoples, as individuals: all for sovereign human rights” (vii). She connects the protagonist of the novel to this shift in thinking, describing him not as the stereotypical “spiritual savage” but as an individual struggling with both personal and generational grief. Harjo explains that the novel was originally conceived of as a poem and that its “poetic lyricism” stems from those origins.

In a discussion of the novel’s style, Harjo invokes a thematic thread that weaves through much Indigenous American writing: the use of humor and laughter to cope with relentless hardship and discrimination. She explores the protagonist’s position between the old times and the new times, citing his interaction with earlier spiritual and nationalist beliefs even as he engages with the contemporary effects of colonization.