Customer Reviews

Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong (Indigenous Americas)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Paul Chaat Smith is an associate curator at the National Museum of the American Indian, an institution he once described as "a bad idea whose time has come". That line alone should give warning about the unvarnished opinions he offers in this book of essays, grouped to offer a flow of sorts.

In the earlier parts of the book he discusses how the idea of "Indians" didn't exist until the Europeans arrived. Before that time the Americas was divided up between nations, much as Europe was. There were conflicts between nations, and boundaries changed with time, but that also happened in Europe. It was the Europeans who imposed the idea that all natives were one group of primitive people divided into "tribes", rather than a kaleidoscope of cultures similar to the situation in Europe.

[Note: For an outstanding book on what the Americas were really like before the landing of Columbus, and how the nations of the new world fell, see "1491" by Charles C. Mann, an outstanding book.]

He continues on to explain, often quite amusingly, how movies and other media formed a popular but inaccurate image of native people. (Crazy Horse was nicknamed "Curly" as a kid?!)

Next Smith talks about his involvement with the American Indian Movement. For those who lived through the era, it provides another viewpoint. (A dysfunctional take, by the way.) For younger readers it can serve a brief primer on ancient history.

Then he move into contemporary Indian art. I'll just say I have different tastes than the author, especially regarding performance art.

In the end he returns to the dichotomy between how Indians are viewed and how they really live.

There are parts of this book I really enjoyed, and parts where I disagreed with the author. But it's a short book, and a personal one, and his voice deserves to be heard. If the subject interests you, go ahead and read it. Even when you disagree you'll be forced to think.

A compelling insight on every page, and your friends will be grow tired of your telling them cool stuff you learned from this wonderful book. Beautifully written.

This book isn't about "Native Americans". It isn't about political correctness. It isn't about pride or shame. It's a book about people. All people. People and perceptions. It is a book you should read!

I like parts of it. Kindly I can call is episodic, but Smith might have wandered away from his topic a few times. Though the strong topics are quite compelling and humorous. Smith provides interesting facts in a kind, jabbing style, but obviously I had a lot to learn about photographs and Sitting Bull. A film buff, Smith explores Natives in contemporary films. These were my favorite topics.

The episodic chapters add to a unique form. For the patient reader, Smith will be both informative and witty.

I add 4 stars because I didn't expect to find such a title nor did I think I'd enjoy its tone. I'd recommend it. In fact, my son is reading this right now.

well, maybe not everything, but all the bad stuff. this isn't as relevant as it would have been 20 years ago...

This book is well written by someone who knows what it is to be Native. While Blacks and other minorities are well represented in this society, we, the Natives, are a forgotten people.

It seems that today's government Indians are into the same type of "We're just like you" virus as stopped the black community cold when they began to explore their heritage in the 1960s. Either way we and they come out sounding like second class Europeans. It would be better if a curator would know more about nationalistic European schools and how they found their own identities against the rush to assimilation and internationalism. Why not know more about the people that you are from and how your ancestors were serious adults with serious ideas at least as profound as the low class Europeans who settled here? Instead we get a competition for who's the most wounded person walking.

Yes Indian people were unique and exceptional. Yes the Indian people in North America were as good at what they did as the Indians of Central and South America. So what if Sitting Bull, a Wikasa Wakan, had the good sense to hire a translator when even today the average American has no idea about the differences in Indian linguistic structures, hence culture, and English object relations. Modern Comanches had no problem communicating with John N. Warfield the "Father" of Systems Science when he developed a super modern Integrated Structural Modeling (ISM) program for LaDonna Harris. Hint! Those local Comanche's understood because they had been doing systems modeling since before 1492 and what Warfield's programs did was speed it up using the computer. The Ho chunk and Pueblo acknowledged as much when they used the same program for their council work. TIMS or Tribal Issues Management Systems became a tool that could be used in Tribes and Nations worldwide and its base was already here in Smith's ancestors.

Smith could benefit from studying the way the French Impressionists resisted and found their way out of the overwhelming volume and influence of German chromatic composers after Wagner. Debussy wrote an entire opera only to tear up the second act because the spirit gringos from Berlin, he called them "Klingsor", were so strong in his ear that he couldn't hear his own music. Then he rewrote it and the world GOT what he had been saying about the value of French compositional thought all along.

Curators should be better and give up cheap jokes unless their ancestors really were cartoons. One should note that the rest of us out here do not consider our ancestors cartoons or second rate anything. To do so is an insult to your blood which is a popular thing to do around "authentic government" folks these days.

Provincialism is rife and his cousin Chauvinism is right behind him. It all fell apart when Indian folks out West traded in Louis Ballard, the Quapaw Beethoven listening to the Gods, for Garth Brooks.