Customer Reviews

The Invented Indian: Cultural Fictions and Government Politics

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"The Invented Indian" is a brilliant dissection of the myths that have been so widely circulated by Indians and their apologists. Trading on their supposed past victimization, Indians--like other minorities--have used the power of guilt and smear to gain socio/political and economic spoils from brow-beaten whites. Veteran anthropologist James Clifton is to be congratulated for bravely stepping aside the unwritten rules on how to talk about minorities in general, and Indians in particular by exposing these myths.

I picked this up looking for some even-handed, honest critique of the politics of Indian identity, but this book is a bit too overzealous. The editor Clifton spends so much effort denying he has an anti-Indian agenda and ridiculing the Indians and Indian "apologists" who will predictably protest this book, one cannot help wonder if he himself "protests too much." The book includes as an appendix a laundry list of anticipated insults (e.g., "you are anti-indian," "you are racist") in a preemptive attempt to denigrate the book's detractors, which is completely out of place in a supposedly neutral, academic work.

Clifton is so obsessed with debunking the "Indian myth" that, instead of showing all the complexities of Indian existence, he goes a long way in painting them as frauds. While the book contains some interesting insights, it is hard to pick these out when the book conveys the overall sense that the editor has some sort of ideological or personal ax to grind.

Even giving Clifton the generous benfit of the doubt, this book provides a ready weapon for others like the reviewer below, who don't attempt to hide their resentment towards Indians and "other minorities." The intentions behind this book may not be malicious, as Clifton insists, but they are at least reckless as far as academic works go.

Clifton's anthology is transparently racist and reactionary. I picked this book up at the library, thinking that it dealt with the politics of representation, a sort of "Orientalism" for Native Americans. Instead, I found white authors not only dismissing the rights and contributions of indigenous peoples, but having the gall to claim that non-Indians, because of their "critical distance," can understand natives better than natives can understand themselves. Upon further reading, I discovered that both Vine Deloria JR and Ward Churchill are extremely critical of this influential and racist collection. If one is genuinely interested in issues of representation, this is a much better collection:

Dressing in Feathers: The Construction

or, if one is concerned with the legal and political consequences of Indian stereotyping and misrepresentation, Robert Williams' "Like a Loaded Weapon" deals with these issues (although I recommend skipping the introduction and first chapter):

Like a Loaded Weapon: The Rehnquist Court, Indian Rights, and the Legal History of Racism in America (Indigenous Americas)

I read this book for a paper I had to write about Native Americans. It is an interesting collection of diverse essays dealing with the American Indians. Although I cannot say that each essay was equally interesting (I am not a lawyer), I can say that everyone writing or thinking about Native Americans in the nineties should include this book in his reading-list.