The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America

by Thomas King

Paperback, 2013

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Collection

Indigenous

Publication

Anchor Canada (2013), Edition: Nineth, 336 pages

Description

The Inconvenient Indian is at once a 'history' and the complete subversion of a history-in short, a critical and personal meditation that the remarkable Thomas King has conducted over the past 50 years about what it means to be 'Indian' in North America. Rich with dark and light, pain and magic, this book distills the insights gleaned from that meditation, weaving the curiously circular tale of the relationship between non-Natives and Natives in the centuries since the two first encountered each other. In the process, King refashions old stories about historical events and figures, takes a sideways look at film and pop culture, relates his own complex experiences with activism, and articulates a deep and revolutionary understanding of the cumulative effects of ever-shifting laws and treaties on Native peoples and lands. This is a book both timeless and timely, burnished with anger but tempered by wit, and ultimately a hard-won offering of hope -- a sometimes inconvenient, but nonetheless indispensable account for all of us, Indian and non-Indian alike, seeking to understand how we might tell a new story for the future.… (more)

Media reviews

LA Review of Books

The book Canadians are snapping up hardly paints them in a flattering light. King’s tone is breezy and light, full of funny stories and self-deprecating jokes, but just below that geniality lies a deep reservoir of bitterness over the treatment of Indians in Canada and the United States that

continues on to this day. White North Americans, he argues, prefer their Indians noble, primitive, and safely extinct, and actual, live Indians who stubbornly insist on their rights as an independent people they regard as at best a troublesome nuisance.

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Lit/Rant

It’s a mistake to expect a scholarly history of Native Americans—though Thomas King certainly has he chops to write it—but what we get instead is something only King could do: an historical and cultural memoir, packed with facts and using narrative as it is best used. ... A bit lighter in

tone than Vine Deloria Jr.’s Custer Died for Your Sins, The Inconvenient Indian is also fully rooted in the 21st century, with discussion of contemporary Native American practices and culture.

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The Globe and Mail

The Inconvenient Indian is less an indictment than a reassurance that we can create equality and harmony. A powerful, important book.

Quill and Quire

Novelist Thomas King describes his brilliantly insightful, peevish book about native people in North America as a “a series of conversations and arguments that I’ve been having with myself and others for most of my adult life.” Making no excuses for the intrusion of his own personal biases

and the book’s lack of footnotes, King suggests we view The Inconvenient Indian not as history, but as storytelling “fraught with history.”

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New York Journal of Books

Dr. King’s book should be required reading for anyone seeking insider insight into how Indians have been treated in Canada versus the United States. Born in America and now a distinguished Canadian writer-educator, the author is in a prime position for this undertaking. - See more at:

http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/inconvenient-indian#sthash.0tQDDdxo.dpuf

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