WHEN NICKELS WERE INDIANS PB (Smithsonian Series in Native American Literatures) [Paperback]

HILDEN PATRICIA PENN (Author)

Book Description

Series: Smithsonian Series in Native American Literatures | Publication Date: March 17, 1997

Born in Los Angeles, a blue-eyed descendant of the Nez Perce band, Patricia Penn Hilden passed in white society, a "vanished Indian, and safe." In this memoir of her urban, mixed-blood experience, she recalls her grandfather, a lingering presence and connection to traditions and people that rarely figure in mainstream American culture's notions of Indian identity. Photos & illustrations.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Part white, part Nez Perce Indian, Hilden writes of her experiences living in two cultures, the one spiritual and communal, the other material and individualistic. Though blue-eyed and pale-skinned, she most strongly identified with her Indian heritage but felt accepted neither by whites nor by full-blooded Indians. The contrasting milieus of her formative years-a Los Angeles multiracial neighborhood, upper-class white Palo Alto and UC Berkeley in the radical '60s-added to her identity problems. But this is less a memoir than an angry polemic against the enduring hypocrisy and cruelty of whites toward Indians. In anguish and outrage, she points to both old and current injustices. A particular target is the James Agee-Edward Steichen icon, The Family of Man, which she holds culpable for promulgating false notions of the commonality of all peoples. But her litany of culprits includes white Indian wanna-bes, consciousness-raising liberals, '60s Berkeley radicals, the media, anthropologists, museum curators, British intellectuals and "Euro-centered" whites in general. Hilden, who has studied at Oxford and Cambridge, is a visiting associate professor in the ethnic studies department at Berkeley. Illustrations.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 260 pages
• Publisher: Smithsonian (March 17, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560987472
• ISBN-13: 978-1560987475
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,798,357 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Anger Management, April 4, 2006

By 

Robert S. Newman "Bob Newman" (Marblehead, Massachusetts USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: WHEN NICKELS WERE INDIANS (Smithsonian Series of Studies in Native American Literatures) (Hardcover)

There are so many holocausts, so many genocides. We, the humans, are evil monkeys, no two ways about it. I often doubt to the extreme that we are created in God's image. No way, Jose ! Murder, torture, rape, kidnapping, theft, insult, lies, bigotry, hatred, destruction---our stock in trade. But now, the question is, does any one group have a monopoly on these things ? I would say no. Even if your "group" has engaged in a great deal of any of the above activities are you, personally, thereby guilty ? I would say no again. That's why I found Hilden's book pretty irritating.

Born a white-looking, urban, mixed-blood Indian, with Anglo-Quaker, Osage, Nez Perce and maybe Mexican roots, the author spent her youth in California passing as white, but secretly (or internally) feeling a strong Indian identity. A person in this position would be torn; a sensitive person all the more so. When Hilden writes of her personal experiences-all the influences, the traumas, and batterings of outrageous fortune that a mixed-blood Indian might face in postwar America---I find her writing clever and interesting, certainly passionate. How else would I know about such a person if not by reading her book ? I've never met any Indians and (pace Ms. Hilden) I have never wanted to be one, though when I used to go to Western movies, I always rooted for the Indians, having knowledge of my own holocaust. If Amazon browsers are interested in such an autobiography, I could strongly recommend this book. However.....

The first 90 pages of WHEN NICKELS WERE INDIANS is pretty much of angry blast at whites, at the perpetrators of the genocide, at the continuous theft of Indian land, at the misappropriation of Indian culture, at the collectors of Indian bones and Indian folklore, at anthropologists, at the misrepresentation of everything Indian. Well, it's true. Events in (to choose from such a wide field) Armenia, Jewish history, Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia, and Tasmania show that it was hardly unique. However, do you need to read yet another blast at perfidious, lying, stupid ________s (fill in the blank)? A question. Do you want to read a book that sometimes has as many as 18 usages of ironic quotation marks on a single page ? They signal her anger, her sarcastic turning on everyone and nearly everything. I wondered, as I read, who was good in this world, who did the right thing, how should Indians actually represent themselves then, which authors wrote anything worthwhile, what is the right role for Indians, for minorities in general? I did not learn the answer. I did learn that the author was angry about a lot of things, including past mistreatments, misunderstandings, male sexism, and overly made-up women. She had a right to be, but is that enough ? Should I start my own autobiography with a 90 page blast against Germans, Russians, Poles, and all the anti-Semites of this world ? (now you can buy "cute" little Jewish "puppets" in "free" Prague. Where the "Jews" have gone is another "question".) Anger gets me nowhere, I come back to my life unchanged. Is hers a message I wanted to spend a number of hours reading carefully ? In the end I felt that it was not. I read it carefully anyway. She's got talent, but anger management might have been wise.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Rigged?, August 13, 2007

By 

Post-teen queen "Melanie" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: WHEN NICKELS WERE INDIANS (Smithsonian Series of Studies in Native American Literatures) (Hardcover)

I think this book is a personal rant passing as something to inform readers about American Indians. Can anyone become an American Indian by reclaiming an identity she denied her whole life and then writing as if she represents American Indians? To me that is strange. My observation is that the three ravingly positive reviews are so vague about the book's actual contents that one can't help feeling that they were solicited by the author's friends. The one negative review was, by contrast, very detailed and seems to have been unsolicited!

0 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A rich, beautifully written book, June 30, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: WHEN NICKELS WERE INDIANS PB (Smithsonian Series in Native American Literatures) (Paperback)

Hilden's memoir of growing up mixedblood in LA is a fascinating study of personal experience, images of Indian people in dominant white culture (the stuff on actor Jay Silverheels [Tonto] is especially compelling),AIM, and Native studies (and Native people) in the academy. Hilden's narrative is engaging, even riveting at times. This book is sad and funny. It reads like a good novel.