The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America

Blurb

In The Inconvenient Indian Thomas King offers a deeply knowing darkly funny unabashedly opinionated and utterly unconventional account of Indian White relations in North America since initial contact Ranging freely across the centuries and the Canada U S border King debunks fabricated stories of Indian savagery and White heroism takes an oblique look at Indians and cowboys in film and popular culture wrestles with the history of Native American resistance and his own experiences as a Native rights activist and articulates a profound revolutionary understanding of the cumulative effects of ever shifting laws and treaties on Native peoples and lands Suffused with wit anger perception and wisdom The Inconvenient Indian is at once an engaging chronicle and a devastating subversion of history insightfully distilling what it means to be Indian in North America It is a critical and personal meditation that sees Native American history not as a straight line but rather as a circle in which the same absurd tragic dynamics are played out over and over again At the heart of the dysfunctional relationship between Indians and Whites King writes is land The issue has always been land With that insight the history inflicted on the indigenous peoples of North America broken treaties forced removals genocidal violence and racist stereotypes sharpens into focus Both timeless and timely The Inconvenient Indian ultimately rejects the pessimism and cynicism with which Natives and Whites regard one another to chart a new and just way forward for Indians and non Indians alike