- Paperback: 399 pages
- Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group; 1st Anchor Books Trade Pbk. Ed edition (31 Dec 1997)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0385420366
- ISBN-13: 978-0385420365
- Product Dimensions: 13.3 x 2.2 x 20.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,626,060 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
In the face of a new lightly romanticized view of Native Americans, Killing the White Man's Indian bravely confronts the current myths and often contradictory realities of tribal life today. Following two centuries of broken treaties and virtual government extermination of the "savage redmen," Americans today have recast Native Americans into another, equally stereotyped role, that of eternal victims, politically powerless and weakened by poverty and alcoholism, yet whose spiritual ties with the natural world form our last, best hope of salvaging our natural environment and ennobling our souls.
The truth, however, is neither as grim , nor as blindly idealistic, as many would expect. The fact is that a virtual revolution is underway in Indian Country, an upheaval of epic proportions. For the first time in generations, Indians are shaping their own destinies, largely beyond the control of whites, reinventing Indian education and justice, exploiting the principle of tribal sovereignty in ways that empower tribal governments far beyond most American's imaginations. While new found power has enriched tribal life and prospects, and has made Native Americans fuller participants in the American dream, it has brought tribal governments into direct conflict with local economics and the federal government.
Based on three years of research on the Native American reservations, and written without a hidden conservative bias or politically correct agenda, Killing the White Man's Indian takes on Native American politics and policies today in all their contradictory--and controversial-guises."
The truth, however, is neither as grim , nor as blindly idealistic, as many would expect. The fact is that a virtual revolution is underway in Indian Country, an upheaval of epic proportions. For the first time in generations, Indians are shaping their own destinies, largely beyond the control of whites, reinventing Indian education and justice, exploiting the principle of tribal sovereignty in ways that empower tribal governments far beyond most American's imaginations. While new found power has enriched tribal life and prospects, and has made Native Americans fuller participants in the American dream, it has brought tribal governments into direct conflict with local economics and the federal government.
Based on three years of research on the Native American reservations, and written without a hidden conservative bias or politically correct agenda, Killing the White Man's Indian takes on Native American politics and policies today in all their contradictory--and controversial-guises."
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THE MAN in the baseball cap was standing in the lee of the museum, squinting across the Montana prairie. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
THE MAN in the baseball cap was standing in the lee of the museum, squinting across the Montana prairie. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In my library I have over 100 books dealing the with the American West and especially American Indian history. Original journals and histories written by such as Charles Willard Schultz and George Caitlin and Fr. DeSmet have made me crave a modern, no nonsense, unsentimentilized non New Age study re the American Indian. Bordewich's book is one of the best. I wish Hollywood and others who portray the American Indian would read it. I think the American Indian who reads it would learn a great deal about their own history. I know I did. This is not a book for those with preconceived notions garnered from watching "Dances with Wolves." This is a book for those who are searching for the truth. Well written, and well thought out,it needs to be on the shelf of every student of American Indian history.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I did not find this book to be 'even-handed' at all - in fact, I have to be honest and admit that I gave up before I had finished it, due to a severe attack of exasperation. So why two stars and not one?
Well, it raises interesting issues and questions that need to be confronted: if Native American groups are to be 'sovereign' they are going to have to tackle human rights issues. I did, though, find it a trifle jarring to have a white American lecturing American Indians on human rights, and urging them into a more 'intimate' relationship with the good ol' US of A. Knowing what I know of the dealings between the two sides over the last few centuries, I can quite see why some Indians don't want anything to do with the governments of the US and Canada at all. They have to, though: they're stuck. That doesn't mean that they have to assimilate, which is what Bordewich seems to be suggesting that they'll do - maybe even should do. A happy Indian, he seems to be saying, is one who melds in with wider American society, and he never misses a chance to point out the high rates of intermarriage between Native Americans and other groups, and the diminishing proportion of Indians who are full bloods, as if this in some way negates any rights they have to just treatment at the hands of the US government.
I was particularly irritated by some easily identitifed niggles, and I'll only bore you with two. Firstly, in the introduction, he refuses to use the term 'Native American' because he feels it to be inaccurate and 'strained'. Now, it's not a term which every American Indian is happy with (the author Sherman Alexie, for example, reckons it's the product of white liberal guilt) but others don't like 'Indian' because it's plain wrong. Secondly, he dismisses, in about two lines, a stack of academic research into the connections between the confederation of the Six Nations (Iroquois or Haudenosaunee, the group which includes the Mohawks) and Benjamin Franklin's ideas, when it is pretty clear from what Franklin wrote that he was impressed by the political system the Six Nations had in place and didn't see why, if a bunch of 'savages' could manage it, some English colonies couldn't. He doesn't seem to think the Six Nations had anything to offer.
Thirdly... No, I said only two, and I'll stick to that. Two stars, because he's done a lot of legwork, and raises some questions that need to be considered, and has told some of the more shaming stories of the treatment of the Native Americans. And it's very readable, until your blood pressure starts to climb.
Even-handed it is not.
Well, it raises interesting issues and questions that need to be confronted: if Native American groups are to be 'sovereign' they are going to have to tackle human rights issues. I did, though, find it a trifle jarring to have a white American lecturing American Indians on human rights, and urging them into a more 'intimate' relationship with the good ol' US of A. Knowing what I know of the dealings between the two sides over the last few centuries, I can quite see why some Indians don't want anything to do with the governments of the US and Canada at all. They have to, though: they're stuck. That doesn't mean that they have to assimilate, which is what Bordewich seems to be suggesting that they'll do - maybe even should do. A happy Indian, he seems to be saying, is one who melds in with wider American society, and he never misses a chance to point out the high rates of intermarriage between Native Americans and other groups, and the diminishing proportion of Indians who are full bloods, as if this in some way negates any rights they have to just treatment at the hands of the US government.
I was particularly irritated by some easily identitifed niggles, and I'll only bore you with two. Firstly, in the introduction, he refuses to use the term 'Native American' because he feels it to be inaccurate and 'strained'. Now, it's not a term which every American Indian is happy with (the author Sherman Alexie, for example, reckons it's the product of white liberal guilt) but others don't like 'Indian' because it's plain wrong. Secondly, he dismisses, in about two lines, a stack of academic research into the connections between the confederation of the Six Nations (Iroquois or Haudenosaunee, the group which includes the Mohawks) and Benjamin Franklin's ideas, when it is pretty clear from what Franklin wrote that he was impressed by the political system the Six Nations had in place and didn't see why, if a bunch of 'savages' could manage it, some English colonies couldn't. He doesn't seem to think the Six Nations had anything to offer.
Thirdly... No, I said only two, and I'll stick to that. Two stars, because he's done a lot of legwork, and raises some questions that need to be considered, and has told some of the more shaming stories of the treatment of the Native Americans. And it's very readable, until your blood pressure starts to climb.
Even-handed it is not.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
"Killing the White Man's Indian" is perhaps the best book I've read on Native Americans. It treats the subject even-handedly while exploring critical issues of "Indian Country." The book is beautifully written, well researched, fairly presented, and highly informative. It is an excellent read for any student of Native Americans.
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