Johnny Depp rode into the 'wild' West End of London for The Lone Ranger premiere.

When Dorothy got home to Kansas it always seemed to me she'd been sold a pup; Oz was far more exciting than the hardscrabble toil of her family homestead. Life for settlers in the "oblong states" of the West was tough, mean and short. Reading Willa Cather, I'd assumed she knew about frontier life on the Great Plains because, although her family was originally Welsh, she'd been born on a farm in Virginia in 1873. But the Cathers were an upwardly mobile family; Willa's father had switched from farming to real estate and insurance, and Willa went to the University of Nebraska. After she began to get articles published she switched her major and became a writer.

Short of moving somewhere cold, how do you beat the heat? Tom Peck tried some of the many suggestions for staying cool

Norwegian guitarist Rypdal favours a rocky axe-attack that can sometimes nag, but the two superb orchestral pieces here suggest that he really needs to be seen as a composer.

He is already considering his next death-defying feat in New York

The endangered Lakota language has lost one of its greatest supporters. Albert White Hat, who died in South Dakota on 11 June at the age of 74 of prostate cancer, was instrumental in teaching and preserving the American Indian language and translated the Hollywood film Dances with Wolves into Lakota for its actors.

This coming-of-age story of trauma and survival among the Ojibwe never veers into polemic

As a patch of their native land is offered for £2.5m, the Lakota people have been left split by what to do

American fashion labels dominate the high street, but now it's time to welcome the country's homewares into our homes, says Trish Lorenz

Ah, Phil. When will you learn?

Out of America: US sports teams are dropping Native Indian-inspired names that are viewed as racist

When convicted anti-Semite John Galliano wore a Homburg-style hat (popular with Hasidic Jews), it upset many in the Jewish community. But the danger of wearing the wrong titfer is everywhere. Wear a bowler and you look  like a banker (or an East London trendy).

Sherman Alexie has beaten the odds. First, he wasn't expected to live, having been born with hydrocephalus, which is fatal if not treated. Secondly, not many Native Americans rise above the narrow confines set by white society – and, as Alexie illustrates, some of their own community – to reach literary success. Alexie has done so, with many national awards.

Why West is not always best