Customer Reviews

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

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

 

 

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.

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!

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.

An astonishingly brave and courageous memoir that left me in an amazement of admiration. Patricia Hilden is certainly the most brilliant Native American theorist in the world today. As a white woman, I am simply in awe that such incredibly insightful work is being accomplished in spite of eurocentric campuses and conservative white males. This is a truly great book.

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.