The poem "Tourists" by Sherman Alexie is in three sections. In the poem, Alexie imagines that various deceased celebrities enter an Indian reservation at different times. He uses them as examples to demonstrate how white people react to Native American customs and lifestyles.

The first section is about film actor James Dean. Alexie explains that Dean "walks everywhere now," so he arrives at the reservation on foot instead of in a fast car. This is because in real life, Dean died in a car crash at the age of twenty-four. The Native American woman of Dean's dreams, according to Alexie, looks like Natalie Wood, an actress who was Dean's love interest in the film Rebel without a Cause. Wood is not Native American, and in The Searchers, a film that Alexie mentions in the poem, Wood plays a white woman who is kidnapped by Native Americans. This indicates that Dean is there under false pretenses. Dean joins a Native American dance, but he dances "like a crazy man, like a profane clown." In other words, he has no respect for how the dance is really supposed to be done. He bumps into people, "knocks loose an eagle feather," and is generally obnoxious and disrespectful. The Native Americans stop and stare at Dean, although he wants them to continue.

In the second section of the poem, the rock singer Janis Joplin, who died of a heroin overdose when she was twenty-seven, visits a reservation bar called the Powwow Tavern. She tells the Native Americans there that she can play songs on the jukebox that can redeem them and save their lives. However, in return, she wants money, alcohol, and true stories about their lives. She represents white people who come to the reservation for self-profit. However, the drunken Native Americans see through her selfishness, so they lie to her. She knows this, but she sings with them anyway.

In the final section, a cold, exhausted Marilyn Monroe drives to the reservation. A famous film actress, Monroe died of an overdose of barbiturates, an apparent suicide, at the age of thhirty-six. Monroe is unable to explain her needs, but the Indian women notice tracks from drug needles on her arms and lead her into the women's sweat lodge. Before she enters, she has to take off her clothes, so Monroe sits naked in the steam with the Native American women, who respect her and keep her secrets to themselves. Gradually, Monroe's self-consciousness goes away in the sacred atmosphere of the lodge. The women sing of her health and courage, and although she is not Native American, she becomes united with them. Hers is the only positive testimony of the three, perhaps because she comes in a humble, broken spirit, expecting nothing.