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

by Thomas King Narrated by Lorne Cardinal

Overview

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.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

A Native novelist and vocal advocate for First Nation rights, King (The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative) delivers an intelligent and eye-opening overview of Native peoples in post-Columbus North America in this new volume, a book that “has been a work-in-progress for most of adult life.” The effort shows. Fastidiously working his way from convenient and comforting myths (like that of Pocahontas rescuing Capt. John Smith) to the real-life atrocities on the Trail of Tears, at Wounded Knee, and countless other incidents, and on to the 20th century’s conscious, legislated marginalization of Natives—King demonstrates with sharp and swift strokes how the U.S. and Canada have repeatedly treated Natives as an inconvenience, an obstacle to be rid of, moved, or carefully rounded up, then reimagined altogether. It’s also a book that charts how such injustices are often replaced by kinder, more audience-friendly historical narratives; as King quips, “fictions are less unruly than histories.” Reminiscent of the subversive revisionism of Howard Zinn, King’s deeply personal and knowledgeable account of North American Natives scathes, chides, and often pokes fun, but suffers from a unilaterally sardonic tone that seethes with understandable indignation but leaves too little space for hope or progress. Agent: Jackie Kaiser, Westwood Creative Artists (Canada). (Sept.)

From the Publisher

National Bestseller
Winner of the 2015 CBC Bookie Awards - Non-Fiction
Winner of the 2014 RBC Taylor Prize
Winner of the 2014 British Columbia's National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction
Winner of the 2013 Canadian Booksellers Association Non-Fiction Book of the Year
Finalist for Canada Reads 2015
Finalist for 2014 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Non-Fiction
Finalist for 2013 Trillium Award

"[The Inconvenient Indian is] essential reading for everyone who cares about Canada and who seeks to understand native people, their issues and their dreams. . . . Thomas King is beyond being a great writer and storyteller, a lauded academic and educator. He is a towering intellectual. For native people in Canada, he is our Twain; wise, hilarious, incorrigible, with a keen eye for the inconsistencies that make us and our society flawed, enigmatic, but ultimately powerful symbols of freedom. The Inconvenient Indian is less an indictment than a reassurance that we can create equality and harmony. A powerful, important book." —Richard Wagamese, The Globe and Mail

"King is a Canadian icon. . . . The Inconvenient Indian is labelled a history book but it is about Canada today. I suggest teachers include a copy in every school classroom. It made me a better Canadian and more compassionate person." —Craig Kielburger, co-founder of Free the Children, defending The Inconvenient Indian at Canada Reads 2015

"Every Canadian should read Thomas King’s new book, The Inconvenient Indian. . . . It's funny, it’s readable, and it makes you think. If you have any kind of a social conscience, The Inconvenient Indian will also make you angry." —Toronto Star

"Sharply intellectual and informative, yet humourous and delightfully human, King unearths the myths and misunderstandings about Aboriginal peoples—and there is certainly a lot to dig up. If it's an act of solidarity and outstanding creative non-fiction you're after, get yourself a copy of The Inconvenient Indian." —Amber Dawn, National Post

"Thomas King is funny. And ironic, sarcastic, clever and witty. His writing style is direct, offbeat and accessible. . . . [The Inconvenient Indian is] a riveting, sweeping narrative that illuminates, horrifies, stupefies and educates. This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to better understand the enormous divide that persists between many aboriginals and non-aboriginals." —Edmonton Journal

"The Inconvenient Indian may well be unsettling for many non-natives in this country to read. This is exactly why we all should read it. Especially now." —Vancouver Sun

"The Inconvenient Indian is a book of stories with a lot of history in it. It may well be the best analysis of how Native people have existed, and still exist, in North America. . . . What a gift this book is. What gratitude we owe this wise and gracious and frisky writer. . . . Even if you think you know North American Aboriginal history, you will be richly engaged by the stories [King] tells. And if you don’t know it, this is a fine place to begin." —The Chronicle Journal

"King uses stories to turn history upside down. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that he presents history with a candour and honesty rarely found in usual accounts of the interaction of aboriginals and non-aboriginals." —The Winnipeg Free Press

"What makes it all palatable, and at times nearly pleasurable, is King’s gift of irony. He’s a master of the lethal one-liner. . . .  King wants to make his readers smile even as they wince. . . . This book includes painful reminders of the huge injustices done to Indians in the past. It also sets out a few reasons why the future may be better." —Calgary Herald

"Brilliantly insightful. . . . Humour aside, this is an unflinching, occasionally fierce work. Natives are often chided for dwelling too much on the past, yet if this book proves anything, it’s that it behooves all of us to do a lot more of exactly that." —Quill & Quire

"The Inconvenient Indian [is] a remarkable narrative of native culture, policy, and history in North America. It’s also a powerful reality check." —The Hill Times

"Subversive, entertaining, well-researched, hilarious [and] enraging. . . . In this thoughtful, irascible account, and in characteristically tricksterish mode, King presents a provocative alternative version of Canada’s heritage narrative." —RBC Taylor Prize Jury

"The Inconvenient Indian exposes and makes accessible, perhaps for the first time, our perspective of events that have shaped this continent. King is reclaiming our true lived experience in the tradition of our storytellers and artists. He brings humour, razor sharp analysis and insight, compelling every reader to confront the uncomfortable and urgent reality of our peoples today. His voice makes a fundamental contribution to the effort required to engage in understanding and respect for a dignified and just way forward for all who today call this land home." —National Chief Shawn A-in-chut Atleo

"An extremely informative book, well-researched, well-written. Mr. King will alarm you with his cleverness and originality." —Tomson Highway
 
"Fascinating, often hilarious, always devastatingly truthful, The Inconvenient Indian is destined to become a classic of historical narrative. For those who wish to better understand Native peoples, it is a must read. For those who don't wish to understand, it is even more so." —Joseph Boyden
 
"Not since Eduardo Galeano's astonishing trilogy, Memory of Fire, have I read an account of European contact and the Amerindian experience as  full of wit, compassion, humour, irony and pathos as this wonderful and brilliant new book by Thomas King. At moments I found myself laughing aloud, at others wiping a tear from my eye." —Wade Davis

"A book of incredible range and genius. From the iconography of the ‘Indian,’ sedimented in everyday objects from butter to missiles, to the ongoing economic war waged against First Nations peoples across North America, Thomas King is magisterial in this devastating and comprehensive dissection of history, contemporary politics and culture. His analysis is incisive, the seam of irony running through his prose, as affable as a filet knife." —Dionne Brand

Library Journal

King (The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative) is a multitalented author of Cherokee descent whose accomplishments include writing children's books, novels, short story collections, and historical works. Here he offers his views on people and events that have impacted Native people in North America from the time of Columbus to the present day. Although this type of monograph has become somewhat overrepresented, King's title manages to rise above other works in the genre. Simply put, his conversational authorial voice makes the book both witty and thought-provoking. His inclusion of Canada's First Nations also offers an essential dimension not seen often enough in such works. While he touches on the usual suspects, such as Columbus and Pocahontas, King also addresses topics such as the activities of Native Americans who perpetuate stereotypes of their own people. One example he offers is U.S. Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell's speech at the opening of an American Indian museum in 2004; to appear "authentic," the senator wore buckskins and a feathered headdress instead of a suit, which is what he would have typically worn as a politician. VERDICT This is an entertaining read that will most appeal to academic readers interested in anthropology or North American history.—John R. Burch, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY

Kirkus Reviews

"[A]ny discussion of Indians in North America is likely to conjure up a certain amount of rage," writes King (A Short History of Indians in Canada, 2013, etc.) in this quirky history--but also "moments of irony and humour." Taking a deep historical look at both Canada and the United States, the author irreverently recounts the wonderful treaties that were made and frequently broken. As William Tecumseh Sherman said, "treaties were never made to be kept, but to serve a present purpose, to settling a present difficulty in the easiest manner possible…and then to be disregarded as soon as this purpose was tainted." Though the story is hardly new, many readers likely don't know much about Canadian Indians' difficulties with the English and French. In fact, they were treated as badly as the natives of the Lower 48. The author's wit and storytelling talent make the book easy to read; more importantly, his humor may keep readers from wanting to scream at the injustices. In his exploration, King roughly categorizes Indians as "dead Indians," "legal Indians" and "live Indians." Dead Indians are the stereotypical noble savages clad in buckskin and feathers. Live Indians are literally live and not living up to the dead Indian cliché; legal Indians are those people that the government(s) has declared are live Indians. The author has plenty to say about the white man's treatment of the land, with environmental issues like the Alberta Tar Sands and the Keystone Pipeline at the top of his how-dumb-can-you-be list. If there are anger and sarcasm in the tales of abuse and sequestered Indian lands, you can't really blame him. King's wife, reading over his shoulder, suggested he had way too many lists. She's right, but this is still a solid book and a good look at what can be done in the future of Indian-white relations.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172071461
Publisher:	Novel Audio
Publication date:	11/15/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

FORGET COLUMBUS

Out of the belly of Christopher's ship a mob bursts Running in all directions Pulling furs off animals Shooting buffalo Shooting each other
— Jeannette Armstrong, "History Lesson"

When I announced to my family that I was going to write a book about Indians in North America, Helen said, "Just don't start with Columbus." She always gives me good advice. And I always give it my full consideration.

In October of 1492, Christopher Columbus came ashore somewhere in the Caribbean, a part of world geography with which Europeans were unfamiliar, and as a consequence, he was given credit for discovering all of the Americas. If you're the cranky sort, you might argue that Columbus didn't discover anything, that he simply ran aground on an unexpected land mass, stumbled across a babel of nations. But he gets the credit. And why not? It is, after all, one of history's jobs to allocate credit. If Columbus hadn't picked up the award, it would have been given to someone else.

The award could have gone to the Norse. They arrived on the east coast of North America long before Columbus. There is even evidence to suggest that Asians found their way to the west coast as well.

But let's face it, Columbus sailing the ocean blue is the better story. Three little ships, none of them in showroom condition, bobbing their way across the Atlantic, the good captain keeping two journals so that his crew wouldn't realize just how far they had drifted away from the known world, the great man himself wading ashore, wet and sweaty, flag in hand, a letter of introduction to the Emperor of the Indies from the King and Queen of Spain tucked in his tunic.

A Kodak moment.

And let's not forget all the sunny weather, the sandy beaches, the azure lagoons, and the friendly Natives.

Most of us think that history is the past. It's not. History is the stories we tell about the past. That's all it is. Stories. Such a definition might make the enterprise of history seem neutral. Benign.

Which, of course, it isn't.

History may well be a series of stories we tell about the past, but the stories are not just any stories. They're not chosen by chance. By and large, the stories are about famous men and celebrated events. We throw in a couple of exceptional women every now and then, not out of any need to recognize female eminence, but out of embarrassment.

And we're not easily embarrassed.

When we imagine history, we imagine a grand structure, a national chronicle, a closely organized and guarded record of agreed-upon events and interpretations, a bundle of "authenticities" and "truths" welded into a flexible yet conservative narrative that explains how we got from there to here. It is a relationship we have with ourselves, a love affair we celebrate with flags and anthems, festivals and guns.

Well, the "guns" remark was probably uncalled for and might suggest an animus toward history. But that's not true. I simply have difficulty with how we choose which stories become the pulse of history and which do not.

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

On second thought, let's not start with Columbus. Helen was right. Let's forget Columbus. You know, now that I say it out loud, I even like the sound of it. Forget Columbus.

Give it a try. Forget Columbus.

Instead, let's start our history, our account, in Almo, Idaho. I've never been there, and I suspect that most of you haven't either. I can tell you with certainty that Christopher Columbus didn't discover the town. Nor did Jacques Cartier or Samuel de Champlain or David Thompson or Hernando Cortés. Sacajawea, with Lewis and Clark in tow, might have passed through the general area, but since Almo didn't exist in the early 1800s, they couldn't have stopped there. Even if they had wanted to.

Almo is a small, unincorporated town of about 200 tucked into south central Cassia County in southern Idaho. So far as I know, it isn't famous for much of anything except an Indian massacre.

A plaque in town reads, "Dedicated to the memory of those who lost their lives in a most horrible Indian massacre, 1861. Three hundred immigrants west bound. Only five escaped. Erected by the S&D of Idaho Pioneers, 1938."

Two hundred and ninety-five killed. Now that's a massacre. Indians generally didn't kill that many Whites at one time. Sure, during the 1813 Fort Mims massacre, in what is now Alabama, Creek Red Sticks killed about four hundred Whites, but that's the largest massacre committed by Indians that I can find. The Lachine massacre on Montreal Island in Quebec in 1689 killed around ninety, while the death toll in nearby La Chesnaye was forty-two. In 1832, eighteen were killed at Indian Creek near Ottawa, Illinois, while the 1854 Ward massacre along the Oregon Trail in western Idaho had a death toll of nineteen. The 1860 Utter massacre at Henderson Flat near the Snake River in Idaho killed twenty-five. The 1879 Meeker massacre in western Colorado killed eleven. The Fort Parker massacre in Texas in 1836 killed six.

It's true that in 1835, just south of present-day Bushnell, Florida, Indians killed 108, but since all of the casualties were armed soldiers who were looking for trouble and not unarmed civilians who were trying to avoid it, I don't count this one as a massacre.

By the way, these aren't my figures. I borrowed them from William M. Osborn, who wrote a book, The Wild Frontier, in which he attempted to document every massacre that occurred in North America. The figures are not dead accurate, of course. They're approximations based on the historical information that was available to Osborn. Still, it's nice that someone spent the time and effort to compile such a list, so I can use it without doing any of the work.

I should point out that Indians didn't do all the massacring. To give credit where credit is due, Whites massacred Indians at a pretty good clip. In 1598, in what is now New Mexico, Juan de Onate and his troops killed over eight hundred Acoma and cut off the left foot of every man over the age of twenty-five. In 1637, John Underhill led a force that killed six to seven hundred Pequot near the Mystic River in Connecticut. In 1871, around one hundred and forty Pinal and Aravaipa Apaches were killed in the Camp Grant massacre in Arizona Territory. Two hundred and fifty Northwestern Shoshoni were killed in the 1863 Bear River massacre in what is now Idaho, while General Henry Atkinson killed some one hundred and fifty Sauk and Fox at the mouth of the Bad Axe River in Wisconsin in 1832. And, of course, there's always the famous 1864 Sand Creek massacre in Colorado, where two hundred peaceful Cheyenne were slaughtered by vigilantes looking to shoot anything that moved, and the even more infamous Wounded Knee in 1890, where over two hundred Lakota lost their lives.

Of course, body counts alone don't even begin to tell the stories of these slaughters, but what the figures do suggest — if you take them at face value — is that Whites were considerably more successful at massacres than Indians. So, the 1861 Almo massacre by the Shoshone-Bannock should stand out in the annals of Indian bad behavior. After the massacre at Fort Mims, Almo would rank as the second-largest massacre of Whites by Indians.

Three hundred people in the wagon train. Two hundred and ninety-five killed. Only five survivors. It's a great story. The only problem is, it never happened.

You might assume that something must have happened in Almo, maybe a smaller massacre or a fatal altercation of some sort that was exaggerated and blown out of proportion.

Nope.

The story is simply a tale someone made up and told to someone else, and, before you knew it, the Almo massacre was historical fact.

The best summary and critical analysis of the Almo massacre is Brigham Madsen's 1993 article in Idaho Yesterdays, "The Almo Massacre Revisited." Madsen was a historian at the University of Utah when I was a graduate student there. He was a smart, witty, gracious man, who once told me that historians are not often appreciated because their research tends to destroy myths. I knew the man, and I liked him. So, in the spirit of full disclosure, I should say that I have a bias toward his work.

Bias or no, Madsen's research into Almo settles the question. No massacre. As Madsen points out in his article, attacks by Indians did not go unmarked. The newspapers of the time — the Deseret News in Salt Lake City, the Sacramento Daily Union, the San Francisco Examiner — paid close attention to Indian activity along the Oregon and California trails, yet none of these papers had any mention of Almo. Such an event would certainly have come to the attention of Indian Service agents and the military, but again Madsen was unable to find any reference to the massacre either in the National Archives or in the records that the Bureau of Indian Affairs kept for the various states and territories. Nor does the Almo massacre appear in any of the early histories of Idaho.

You would expect that the rescue party from Brigham who supposedly came upon the carnage and buried the bodies of the slain settlers — or the alleged five survivors who escaped death — would have brought the massacre to the attention of the authorities. Okay, one of the survivors was a baby, but that still left a chorus of voices to sound the alarm.

And yet there is nothing.

In fact there is no mention of the matter at all until sixty-six years after the fact, when the story first appeared in Charles S. Walgamott's 1926 book Reminiscences of Early Days: A Series of Historical Sketches and Happenings in the Early Days of Snake River Valley. Walgamott claims to have gotten the story from a W.M.E. Johnston, and it's a gruesome story to be sure, a Jacobean melodrama complete with "bloodthirsty Indians" and a brave White woman who crawls to safety carrying her nursing child by its clothing in her teeth.

A right proper Western.

That the plaque in Almo was erected in 1938 as part of "Exploration Day," an event that was designed to celebrate Idaho history and promote tourism to the area, is probably just a coincidence. In any case, the fact that the story is a fraud didn't bother the Sons and Daughters of Idaho Pioneers who paid for the plaque, and it doesn't bother them now. Even after the massacre was discredited, the town was reluctant to remove the marker, defending the lie as part of the culture and history of the area. Which, of course, it now is.

But let's not blame Almo for spinning fancy into fact. There are much larger fictions loose upon the land. My favorite old chestnut features Pocahontas and Captain John Smith. The original story, the one Smith told, is that he was captured by the Powhatan in 1607, shortly after arriving in what is now Virginia. He was taken to one of the main villages, and just as the Indians made ready to kill him, he was saved by the daughter of the head man, a young woman whom all of us know as Pocahontas.

It's a pretty good tale. And 1607 wasn't the first time Smith had used it. Before he came to America, he had been a soldier of fortune, had found himself in a number of tight spots, and, according to the good Captain, had been befriended and/or saved by comely women. Smith makes mention of three such women in his writings, the Lady Tragabigzanda in Turkey, the Lady Callamata in Russia, and Madam Chanoyes in France, all of whom "assisted" him during his trials and tribulations as a young mercenary.

Lucky guy.

Of course, the story of heroes being saved by beautiful maidens is a classic and had been around for centuries. Personally, I don't believe that Smith knew Pocahontas. I certainly don't believe that she saved him or that they had any sort of relationship. His first mention of her doesn't come until Pocahontas arrived in England in 1616. By then, as an authentic American Indian princess, she had acquired a certain fame and notoriety, and Smith, I suspect, eager to bathe once again in the warmth of public glory, took the stock story out of storage, dusted it off, and inserted Pocahontas's name in the proper place.

Helen likes details, and she is inordinately fond of footnotes. I'm not. But because I love her, I try to accommodate her needs. So, here are the facts, as we know them. Smith does come to Virginia in 1607. He is most likely captured by the Powhatan people. Whether they want to kill him or not is a moot point. The reality is they don't. He gets back to the colony in one piece, is injured in a gunpowder explosion, and returns to England in 1609. Did he know Pocahontas? There's nothing to indicate that he did. Did he have a relationship with her as the Disney folks suggest in their saccharine jeu d'esprit? Well, at the time of the supposed meeting, Smith would have been twenty-seven and Pocahontas would have been about ten, maybe twelve years old. Possible, but not probable.

Still, the story, false though I believe it to be, has been too appealing for North America to ignore. And we have dragged the damn thing — with its eroticism and exoticism, its White hero and its dusky maiden — across the continent and the centuries.

There's an 1885 musical called Po-ca-hon-tas, or the Gentle Savage by John Brougham, a 1924 film directed by Bryan Foy called Pocahontas and John Smith, a racehorse named Pocahontas, a Pocahontas train that ran between Norfolk, Virginia, and Cincinnati, Ohio, for the Norfolk and Western Railway in the 1950s and '60s, a Pocahontas coal field in Tazewell, West Virginia, a Pocahontas video game, as well as the towns of Pocahontas in Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, and Virginia.

There's a town in Alberta just a little north of Jasper called Pocahontas, where you can rent your very own cabin (with kitchenette) in the heart of the heart of nature, relax in the curative waters of Miette Hot Springs, and enjoy a meal at the Poco Café.

I don't know about you, but it's on my bucket list.

The irony is that there are a great many stories that are as appealing as the story of Pocahontas and that have more substance than the fiction of the Almo massacre.

The Rebellion of 1885, with Louis Riel playing the lead, is one such story, as is the 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn, starring George Armstrong Custer. Each is a moment in the national identities of Canada and the United States, though in terms of prominence and fame, they are not historical equals. While the 1885 Rebellion as a historical moment and Louis Riel as a name are well known throughout Canada, the event and the man hardly register in America. I would say that they don't register at all, but I ran into someone in San Francisco about twelve years back who knew something about Batoche and was able to use "Duck Lake" and "Gabriel Dumont" in the same sentence. On the other hand, Custer's name and the legend of the Little Bighorn are well known in both countries, even though the battle in Montana was not nearly as important or as long as the Métis fight for independence. In part, that's not history's fault. You can blame the extra brightness of Custer's star on nineteenth-century American outrage and twentieth-century Hollywood.

Nevertheless, each of these events gave us a man of historical note. To call them "heroes" might be stretching the noun, for, while Riel and Custer are enduring, larger-than-life figures, they also have mixed reputations. Riel may have negotiated the terms under which Manitoba became a part of Canada, but he is also remembered as a messianic nutcase. Custer may have been a successful Civil War commander and one of the officers on hand at General Robert E. Lee's surrender, but he is also burdened with a reputation as an arrogant officer who made a fatal mistake and died fighting a superior force. One man was Métis, one was White. Custer died on the battlefield from wounds that were, in a manner of speaking, self-inflicted, while Riel was hanged for treason at the insistence of Prime Minister John A. Macdonald.

In Prairie Fire, their 1984 book on the North-West Rebellion, Bob Beal and Rod Macleod argue that "when most Canadians think of the North-West Rebellion of 1885, they picture a righteous and determined Louis Riel leading, for the last time, a band of dissatisfied Métis in a desperate reaction against the Government's treatment of their people." I don't disagree with that general image, but most Canadians, like most Americans, have a shockingly poor grasp of their own history. Dates, people, the large and small nuances of events have all been reduced to the form and content of Classic Comics. This isn't a complaint. It's an acknowledgment that people are busy with other things and generally glance at the past only on holidays. Given our hectic schedules, the least I can do is to provide a little historical background so no one will feel left out when our story gets complicated.

The Battle of the Little Bighorn. Or the Battle of Greasy Grass, as it is also known. The 7th Cavalry, under the command of George Armstrong Custer, versus the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne, led by Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Gall, et al. Five companies under Custer's command — 258 soldiers — were wiped out, along with 7 civilians and 3 Arikara scouts.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Inconvenient Indian"
by .
Copyright © 2012 Dead Dog Café Productions, Inc..
Excerpted by permission of University of Minnesota Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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