Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask: Revised and Expanded

By Anton Treuer

A revised and updated edition of a modern classic offers answers to nearly 200 essential and thought-provoking questions about the Native people of North America.

What have you always wanted to know about Indians? Do you feel like you should already know the answers—or are concerned that your questions may be offensive? For more than a decade, Anton Treuer's clear, candid, and informative book has answered questions for tens of thousands of readers. This revised edition both revisits old questions from a new perspective and expands on topics that have become increasingly relevant over the past decade, including activism and tribal enrollment; truth and reconciliation efforts; gender roles and identities in Indigenous communities; the status of Alaskan Natives and Canadian First Nations; and much more.

Treuer, an Ojibwe scholar and cultural preservationist, addresses nearly 200 questions on a range of topics—questions that are thoughtful and outrageous, modern and historical, and always interesting.

—What are we supposed to call North America's first people?
—Can white people dance at powwows?
—What's the point of land acknowledgments?
—Does tribal sovereignty mean that tribes can offer abortion services in states where it is now otherwise illegal?

With frank, funny, and sometimes personal prose, this book cuts through myths, guilt, and anger and builds a foundation for true understanding and positive action.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press
• Release date: Apr 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9781681342474

Anton Treuer

Anton Treuer,/strong>, professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University, is the author of Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians but Were Afraid to Ask and thirteen other books on Ojibwe history and language.

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Cover: Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians but Were Afraid to Ask, Revised and Expanded by Anton Treuer

Praise for the first edition

"Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians does more than answer the questions. It raises other questions about civilization and religion. It does what a book should do."

Basil H. Johnston (Nawash Unceded First Nation Ojibwe), author of The Manitous and many other books on Ojibwe life and culture

"Anton Treuer is a consummate bridge-builder. Patient and pointed in equal measure, Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians inspires readers to embrace human commonality—and when confronted with issues of social and cultural difference, to engage our better natures."

Philip J. Deloria (Standing Rock Sioux), Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History, Harvard University and author of Indians in Unexpected Places

President John F. Kennedy said it best in 1960: ‘American Indians remain probably the least understood and most misunderstood Americans of us all.’ I highly recommend this extraordinary book that makes every effort to set the record straight.

Tim Giago (Oglala Lakota), founding member, Native American Journalists Association

I love this book. It is a great straightforward educational tool for non-Indians and Indians alike. It answered some of the questions that I as a tribal chairman was unclear about.

Floyd Buck Jourdain (Red Lake Ojibwe), tribal chair, 2004–14

Everything

You Wanted

to Know About

INDIANS

but Were Afraid to Ask

Anton Treuer

Logo: Minnesota Historical Society Press

© 2012, 2023 by the Minnesota Historical Society. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, write to Minnesota Historical Society Press, 345 Kellogg Blvd. W., St. Paul, MN 55102-1906.

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ISBN: 978-1-68134-246-7 (paper)

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For Isaac, with high hopes that the world in which you raise your children will be kinder and more understanding than this one

Contents

One// Introduction: Ambassador

Two// Terminology

What terms are most appropriate for talking about North America’s first people?

What terms are not appropriate for talking about North America’s first people?

What terms are most appropriate for talking about each tribe?

How do I know how to spell all these complicated terms?

What term is most appropriate—nation, band, tribe, or reservation?

What does the word powwow mean?

How can I find out the meaning of the place names around me that come from Indigenous languages?

Three// History

How many Indians were in North and South America before contact with Europeans?

When did Indians really get to North America?

Why does it matter when Indians got here?

What do Indians say about their origins?

Who else made it here before Columbus?

What is the real story of Columbus?

Why does getting the Columbus story right matter?

Why are some people trying to change Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day?

What is the Doctrine of Discovery?

What was the historical relationship between Christian missionaries and Native people?

What is the real story of Thanksgiving?

What is the real story of Pocahontas?

What did Pontiac do?

Why is Tecumseh such a famous Native?

Who was Ely Parker?

Who was Geronimo?

Who was Sitting Bull?

Did Native Americans scalp?

Why did Native Americans scalp?

Were Natives more violent than Whites?

When did the US government stop making treaties with Indians and why?

Why do some people use the word genocide in discussing the treatment of Indians?

How was killing off the buffalo related to the Indian wars?

Were Indians ever enslaved?

Did Indians ever enslave others?

Was the swastika an Indigenous symbol before the Nazis used it?

Did Indians practice polygamy? Do they now?

What are Native views about LGBTQ people?

How was gender configured in Native communities?

Do Indigenous people in Canada get treated more fairly by their government than those in the United States?

Four// Culture, Identity, & Religion

Why do Indians have long hair?

Do Indians live in tipis?

What is fasting and why do Indians do it?

What are clans and do all Indians have them?

Where are the real Indians?

What does traditional mean?

Aren’t all Indians traditional?

Why is it called a traditional Indian fry bread taco?

What is Indian time?

What are Indian cars?

I thought that Indians have a strong sense of ecological stewardship, so why do I also see a lot of trash in some yards?

Are Natives at the front of environmental activism, or is that a stereotype?

If Indians respect the environment, how come the Makah hunt endangered whales?

Do Indians have a stronger sense of community than non-Indians?

What sports are most popular for Natives today?

What music is most popular for Native kids today?

How are social media and smartphones affecting life in Indian country?

What are some of the customs around dating and marriage?

What happens when a Native and Nonnative person date?

What are some of the customs around pregnancy and childbirth?

Why do Indians have so many kids?

What are naming ceremonies?

Can a Nonnative person get an Indian name?

What are coming-of-age ceremonies?

How are different gender identities and roles viewed in Native communities today?

What is life like for LGBTQ Natives today?

How come everyone’s laughing at a traditional Indian funeral?

How do Native communities see Christian missionaries today?

Are a lot of Natives Christian today?

Is it true that the Pueblos and some other tribes combine Christian and traditional Native religious practices?

What is Indian religion?

Why do Indians use tobacco for ceremonies?

What are kachinas?

It seems like Indians have a deeper spiritual connection than in many religious traditions. Is that true?

What is meant by Native ways of knowing?

Do they charge for participation in Native ceremonies?

What is a sweat lodge?

What are dream catchers?

Do Indians still get persecuted for their religious beliefs?

Five// Powwow

What is a powwow?

What do the different styles of dance mean?

Why are 49 songs sung in English?

How come they have a prize purse at powwows?

Can White people dance at powwows?

Do women sing at powwows?

What is the protocol for gifts at powwows?

Six// Tribal Languages

How many tribal languages are spoken in North and South America?

Which ones have a chance to be here a hundred years from now?

Why are fluency rates higher in Canada?

It seems like tribal languages won’t give Native people a leg up in the modern world. Why are tribal languages important to Indians?

Why should tribal languages be important to everyone else?

What are the challenges to successfully revitalizing tribal languages?

When were tribal languages first written down?

Many tribal languages were never written. Why do they write them now?

Why is it funnier in Indian?

How do tribal languages encapsulate a different worldview?

Why don’t tribes do more to support language and culture?

Seven// Politics

What is sovereignty?

Why do Indians have reservations?

Why isn’t being American enough? Why do Indians need reservations today?

If Natives in the United States have their own nations, how did they become American citizens?

What is a non-federally-recognized tribe?

What’s it like for Natives who aren’t part of a recognized tribe?

What is the status of Alaska Natives?

Why do Indians have treaty rights? What other rights do they have that differ from most people?

What is allotment?

What is clouded title?

Is something being done about clouded title?

If tribes had hereditary chiefs, how come there is a democratic process for selecting tribal leaders in most places today?

What’s the Indian Reorganization Act?

Do Indians ever work together, politically and economically?

Why do so many Indians live in urban areas today? What is relocation?

What is life like for urban Indians today?

What is termination?

Why do Indians have their own police and courts in some places?

Why does the FBI investigate murders on some reservations?

Why do state law enforcement agencies investigate murders on some other reservations? What is Public Law 280?

Don’t tribes ever investigate murders on Indian land themselves?

Why do people argue that Leonard Peltier should be freed?

Why is the American Indian Movement controversial?

What is the Indian Child Welfare Act?

How many Native Americans are there today?

What is blood quantum, what is tribal enrollment, and how are they related?

How has tribal enrollment affected you personally?

What’s it like for Natives who don’t look Native?

How come some tribes ban the use and sale of alcohol?

Is there a solution to substance abuse in Indian country?

Don’t all Indians have drinking problems?

Why are some tribes trying to legalize marijuana?

Why did coronavirus kill so many people at Navajo Nation and other reservations?

Why are Indian politics often such a viper’s pit?

I heard that a lot of Indians serve in the US military. How do they reconcile their service with the fact that the US Army killed so many of their people?

What’s it like for Natives who serve in the US military today?

How do Indians feel about the use of Geronimo as the code name for Osama Bin Laden?

Do Native Americans celebrate the Fourth of July?

Do Indians vote Democratic or Republican?

Why is Debra Haaland’s appointment as secretary of the Department of the Interior significant?

Does tribal sovereignty make it possible for tribes to offer abortion services in states where it is now otherwise illegal?

Are tribes getting better?

Eight// Economics

Do Indians get a break on taxes, and if so, why?

Do Indians get a break on license plates?

Why should Indians be eligible for welfare if they are not taxed the same way as everyone else?

Are all Indians living in extreme poverty?

Are all Indians rich from casinos?

How has casino gambling affected Indian communities?

What is the financial impact of tribal business in America?

How have per capita payments affected Indian communities?

What is the future of Indian gaming?

Are tribes impacted by many states legalizing gaming in Nonnative spaces?

How can tribes improve the economic condition of their citizens?

Nine// Education

What were federal residential boarding schools?

How come 50 percent of Indians are flunking their state-mandated tests in English and math?

How does education policy affect Indian country?

Do all Indians have a free ride to college?

Is anyone getting it right in Indian education?

Ten// Social Activism

Why was the Dakota Access Pipeline protest such a big deal?

Do Indians face racial profiling from law enforcement?

How does the Black Lives Matter movement affect the work of Native activists?

How are Natives building bridges with other groups to fight racism?

How does social activism in Latinx communities affect the work of Native activists?

Do Natives throughout North and South America ever work together or communicate about shared struggles?

What is Orange Shirt Day?

Why is there so much concern about mascots?

Why is there such a fuss about Nonnative people wearing Indian costumes for Halloween?

How come commercials using Native imagery make many Natives so angry?

Why is there such a fuss now about public art, statues, and place names?

What is the Land Back Movement?

Why is Bears Ears National Monument significant?

Why is there so much advocacy about missing and murdered Indigenous women?

Does being Native make you worry about your safety or the safety of your family?

Eleven// Perspectives: Coming to Terms and Future Directions

Why are Indians so often imagined rather than understood?

What are some myths and stereotypes about Natives?

As a White person, I don’t feel privileged. So, what do Indians mean by that term?

Why do people talk about White erasure?

What is Critical Race Theory, and does it affect Indian people?

Why don’t tribes solve their own problems?

All these problems are not my fault. Why should I be asked to atone for the sins of my ancestors?

Is there anything wrong with saying that some of my best friends are Indians?

Is there something wrong with saying that my great-grandmother was a Cherokee princess?

I might have some Indian ancestry. How do I find out?

Are DNA tests changing how people connect to tribes?

What is meant by the term Pretendians?

Why is that picture End of the Trail so popular in Indian country?

How have Canadian First Nations people reacted to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission findings?

What’s the point of land acknowledgments?

Regarding casinos and treaty rights, I’m not racist, but it doesn’t seem fair to me. What’s wrong with that line of thinking?

I’m not racist, but it all happened in the past. Why can’t Indians just move on?

Why do Indian people often seem angry?

What are some good books to read about Indians?

Are there any good Indian movies?

Is it okay to read books by Nonnatives that have Native content? Is it okay for a Nonnative to write one?

Have you ever been the object of direct racial discrimination?

You’re a testament to your race. How did you turn out so good?

How can I learn more?

Twelve// Conclusion: Finding Ways to Make a Difference

As a Native person, what can I do to help my tribe?

How do I do that if I’m not connected to my tribe and don’t know my culture?

As a Nonnative person, how can I help?

What gives you hope?

Acknowledgments

Recommended Reading

Notes

Index

Illustration Credits

ONE //

Introduction: Ambassador

"No matter what they ever do to us,

we must always act for the love of our

people and the earth. We must not

react out of hatred against those who

have no sense."

JOHN TRUDELL

INDIANS. We are so often imagined, but so infrequently well understood.

I grew up in a borderland. My family moved a couple times, but we usually lived on or near the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. I went to school in the nearby town of Bemidji with plenty of other Native kids and many more Whites. The town’s racial composition changed a lot since then, but in the 1970s and 1980s, it was all Whites and Indians. Although the town is surrounded by the three largest reservations in Minnesota (in geographic size and population), the two worlds rarely interacted. The school took kids on field trips to Minneapolis, 225 miles away, rather than to the neighboring Native communities. But Indians could be terrifying to members of the White community, and when presented with angry looks and few opportunities to safely learn about their neighbors and the first people of the land, they usually just stuck to their imaginings.

That borderland I grew up in was more than an awkward physical nexus of races and communities. It was a divided and confusing place politically, legally, intellectually, and culturally. The tribes maintained their own governments and rarely got involved in the American political process, especially at the local level. And no outsider ever felt like they had any authority to ask about, much less comment on or participate in, anything happening on the rez. The web of contradictory jurisdictions and agencies that dealt with criminal affairs and Native land never made much sense to anyone of any race.

Indians hadn’t written many books, and school districts and the general public would never open up to Vine Deloria, Jr., and the few other radical Indians who had actually managed to get anything in print. Most of the elders on the rez had gone to government-run residential boarding schools. Their children (the parental generation of my youth) had developed a serious distrust of the government and educational institutions as a result. Educators and administrators resented the parents’ absence at school conferences and the truancy of many Native students, but nobody talked about the bigger issues, which sat like a giant bear in the corner of the room every time the schools and Native families interacted. My family and every one of my uncles and aunts harvested wild rice, snared rabbits, and made maple syrup every year, but most of my Nonnative peers did not.

Although I had several painful experiences with overt racial discrimination as a young person, I had some great friends in high school. I was truly inspired by my history teacher, Thomas Galarneault, whose lectures and support made a significant contribution to my lifelong interest in education and history. I had encouragement from Marlene Bergstrom in the guidance office. And I was a great student. But the borderland was a bramble on every level. I was tired of the tension, the confusion, and the mean-spirited statements of my peers about drunken Indians. I applied to Princeton University on a whim and surprised everyone, from my peers to my parents and especially myself, when I got in. I had found a way out. Or I thought I had.

I was looking forward to a breath of fresh air and a respite from the borderland of my youth as much as I was to the challenges of a new stage of life. And those years remain some of my most treasured. But I still had a profoundly well-educated Princetonian ask me, Where is your tomahawk? Another time, a woman approached me in the college gymnasium and exclaimed, You have the most beautiful red skin. I was too flabbergasted to respond. I took a friend to see Dances with Wolves and was told, Your people have a beautiful culture. My people come from the Great Lakes rather than the Plains and from the modern age rather than the nineteenth century, but again I had no response. I made many lifelong friends at college, and they supported but also challenged me with questions like, Why should Indians have reservations?

By my junior year I realized I had not escaped the borderland. No matter how far I traveled, the haze engulfed everyone I met. Indians were imagined, not understood. And there was a dearth of resources and opportunities to do anything about it. I wanted to come home.

Homesick though I was, I was not going to be another statistic by dropping out of school. I toughed it out at college but started a quest to learn more about myself. I no longer wanted to run from the borderland. I wanted to understand it better and do something to make it easier for others to traverse.

While at Princeton, I heard that a Comanche medicine woman named Barrett Eagle Bear was coming to New Jersey from Texas to run sweat lodge ceremonies. Hungry for a taste of home, I drove out to the wooded area where she would conduct her ceremony and found, to my great surprise, over twenty naked White people standing in the woods, waiting. One man was holding a staff adorned with a pair of deer antlers and chicken feathers. Part of me wanted to laugh—it was twenty naked people standing around in the woods in the broad daylight. Part of me wanted to run for the very same reason. And part of me was mad. Was that what they thought we do—get naked and dance around a fire? With great trepidation, I opened the car door. I was immediately approached by a naked White woman who folded me into a tight embrace, saying, I am so sorry for what my people have done to your people.

Throughout my life, if I have ever thought or said that I had seen it all, I was soon shown something new. Now the desire to laugh, run, or get mad was growing. This was not real. I started to question whether Eagle Bear was even Indian for allowing the charade. But as I carefully separated myself from this woman’s embrace, I looked at her face. She was filled with genuine remorse, on the verge of tears. Respect was a value deeply embedded in my being from my upbringing and cultural experience. Lines on her face showed the wisdom of age and experience. I couldn’t laugh. And I couldn’t just yell at her or give her a mean look and drive away. And in a flash, my running from the borderlands and my desire to find a way for others to travel through them brought me an epiphany.

I was not just another Indian. No Indian really is. Because we are so often imagined and so infrequently understood, I was (both unfairly and rightly) an ambassador for my people. If the morass of misunderstandings that made growing up Native so frustrating for me was ever to be remedied, I would have to do my part to shine some light on the brambles and try to clear a path for others. As that elderly woman looked up at me, I knew that I was probably the first Indian she had ever met and, though it wasn’t fair to anyone, my reaction would be a testament to the character of my entire race. So I didn’t laugh. I didn’t rise to anger. I didn’t call her out or drive away. I very politely said, Could you put some clothes on? I would love to talk to you about all of this.

She put some clothes on. And we talked. I explained that for ceremonies at home we usually covered up in the presence of others, especially with both men and women present. We discussed the ceremony, geography, custom, and practice. We talked about history. I explained my feeling that guilt for Whites and anger for Indians were doing nothing to make the world a better place, especially for the people who harbored such emotions, understandable though they are. The secret was to turn anger and guilt into positive action.

She really listened and she learned a few things. In a weird way, too, I got an education—from a naked stranger in the New Jersey woods. I learned something about the borderland. A real conversation requires safe space, an opportunity for genuine connection, and authentic, reliable information. And I learned something about myself.

When I commit to something, I always go all the way. The decks on my house could withstand an earthquake measuring 6.0 on the Richter scale. I have nine children. I take my job as role model for my children and ambassador for my people seriously. I don’t drink alcohol—not because I am a recovering addict (I have never smoked marijuana, nor have I blacked out or vomited from drink) but because I want to send a message to my own people and to others. I want to redefine suppositions about what it means to be Native. Abstaining is also important to many of the people whom I now serve at ceremonies: they are looking for a clean, sober place to heal, relying upon the integrity of the people who help at those ceremonies to provide that environment.

I gave up on my early plans of becoming an investment banker or lawyer. I never would have been happy in those roles. Instead, I graduated from Princeton with plans to walk the earth, which I did successfully for several months before I had to take a job. But I dedicated myself to the pursuit of my tribal language, culture, and history. I eventually went to graduate school and entered academia. Through it all, I maintained one foot in the wigwam and one in the ivory tower, but I still see the borderland every day out my bedroom window. It is always an education, not just about the world we live in, but about myself.

This book is designed as a tool to help all people navigate that space. Readers can read straight through, peruse the sections, or use the contents and index to find answers to specific questions. Above all, I want this work to provide a place for people to get answers. It offers a critical first step to comfortably dispel erroneous imaginings and develop deeper understandings. Although educators are constantly revising the curriculum in public schools, we still have a long way to go to make it easy for Native and Nonnative peoples to learn about Indian history, culture, and current events. Eighty-seven percent of schools in the United States don’t require any instruction about Native Americans after the year 1900.¹

I have now given hundreds of public lectures on a variety of subjects. This book first emerged as part of the question-and-answer sessions that followed my presentations. Within these safe spaces, people raised a lot of questions. A friend of mine, Michael Meuers, eventually suggested the title of this book as the headline for some of my public lectures. Since then, the appeal of this subject has grown dramatically, bringing me all over the United States and Canada to conduct teacher trainings and give public speeches.

This book was first published in 2012. I wrote it hoping to help the rest of the world understand us, so I was surprised and truly heartened by the responses in the Native community to this book. All Natives get bombarded with the same questions, and we need answers, too. Each of us can speak to our own experiences of growing up and living Native lives. But even though I was raised by a Native woman with a law degree who became a tribal judge, I would have been hard-pressed to explain tribal sovereignty to you coming out of high school. I think a lot of us feel this way about our own history. We went to the same schools as everyone else and learned the same sugarcoated version of Christopher Columbus and the first Thanksgiving as everyone else. It is gratifying that this book has been helping Native people understand

Reviews for Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask

[lycomayflower · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Does what it says on the tin, really, with the book set up with frequently asked questions (asked of Treuer at his speaking engagements, I gather) and his considered answers, grouped into chapters by theme. Very occasionally a little dry, but mostly fascinating, well-written, and wonderfully educational. My only quibble would be that sometimes I knew so little that I didn't even understand the questions, and I think in almost every instance Treuer could have eliminated resulting confusions with one or two sentences of simple explanation before going into his lengthier, detailed answers. Recommended.

[laytonwoman3rd · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book is a primer of sorts, aimed at helping white Americans to "understand, rather than imagine" their native fellow citizens. Presented in a Q & A format, based on the author's public appearances with the same goal, it is easy to take it in small bites for better processing. Although it did not really tell me everything I'd like to know about Native American culture and history (there are at least 50 books in my catalog tagged "Native American" and reading ALL of those would not fulfill that need), it is a good jumping off place for further reading. It covers a lot of ground in a generalized way, from the arrival of Europeans on the North American Continent to the politics of the reservation in the 21st century, and offers a suggested reading list for deeper exploration of what it means to be Indian.

[quinton.baran · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a very interesting book set up in a question and answer format, with major chapter headings of topics. I found the voice of Treuer to be persuasive and generally non-combative, although the Indians as a whole have quite a bit to complain and be angry about. I believe that Treuer's vision is one of mutual understanding, respect, and growth. There were some topics that Treuer persuaded me on, such as the retention of cultural customs, especially tribal language. I also was persuaded about naming, how it is important to consider and respect what a group prefers to be called. I also am thinking about the custom of sports teams that have Indian mascots and such. This is a complex situation, especially when there is divergence of opinion in the local tribes (for example, I understand that the Ute tribe is comfortable with the University of Utah using the Utes as their mascot).

[bell7_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Anton Treuer takes on a variety of questions that people outside of the American Indian / Native American community may be wondering but don't want to ask. He breaks it down by topic (terminology, politics, education, etc.) and in question-and-answer format takes on a variety of topics from "What terms are most appropriate in talking about North America's first people?" to "What's the real story about Columbus?" to casinos and language/culture.As I think almost any book in a Q&A format will be, this is a mixed bag. Some questions and their answers were perfect - I was most interested in the terminology and history sections - some were things I already knew, and others were questions that I never would have thought to ask, or at least wouldn't have phrased in the way he does ("Do all Indians have drinking problems?" or "Why do Indians have so many kids?"). He states in the Introduction that, of course, he cannot speak for all Indians, some answers would be heavily influenced by the fact that he is most familiar with Ojibwe culture, and he sometimes will give his opinion. It was obvious when it was opinion, and it's obvious that keeping language and culture alive is really important to him. Which brings me to the next difficulty with the format, and that is the repetitive nature of it. Sometimes to fully answer a question - especially if a reader is picking up and reading only the sections most pressing to him/her - he had to repeat what he'd said in another one, and when he does so it's often verbatim or close to it. Lastly, though he did a thorough job or including books and other resources to check out for more information and really good end notes, I was completely flummoxed by one issue. On page 138, he quotes the superintendent of a Pennsylvania boarding school for native children, Captain Richard Henry Pratt, as saying: "Our goal is to kill the Indian in order to save the man." Appalled by such a statement, I looked up the end note to find "Captain Richard Henry Pratt, as cited on Wikipedia." As a reference librarian who, admittedly, uses Wikipedia as a starting point, this really bothers me to see as the end note in a published text. I tested to see if I could get a more reputable source, and it's not hard: the Wikipedia entry now (I do want to note that the book was published in 2012 and looking at the Wikipedia entry today, the source is noted as accessed in 2014, so the entry has changed from when he looked) has a link to NPR that has a more thorough quote, with context, that is in fact worded "A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one, and that high sanction of his destruction has been an enormous factor in promoting Indian massacres. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man." This is from a speech in 1892, and it bothers me to know that with a little quick research I could find a better source than he did. Granted, it doesn't change the meaning behind it, but to include it in direct quotes and have it slightly off and cited by Wikipedia makes me just a little uneasy about taking his word for other answers, and giving this book a wholehearted recommendation without a caveat. Perhaps Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians But Were Afraid to Ask should be more of a starting point and introduction to the topic, but if you're really interested in more detail follow it up with more research and check his facts. It certainly covers a lot of topics broadly, and leaves you the resources to continue learning.

[jimocracy · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The author did a fairly good job of answering questions about Indians. As someone who spends a lot of time around Navajos, it was interesting to read the perspective of these issues from someone from another tribe.