King draws in the white reader with humour and bits of dark history, so that this reader feels ashamed/ uncomfortable but unable to put the book down. Labelling an “account” allows King to avoid the discipline of the historian and helped me accept the heavy-handed (though deserved) guilt trip for settler and Christian oppression of native first peoples with few words paid to failings within and of aboriginal communities, themselves.
Mixing US and CDN experience plays to the sovereignty of aboriginals and their relationship to the land, but I would have preferred an all-Canadian book. King ends on upbeats re: the courts recognizing aboriginal rights and effective community leadership. Plus: “The fact of native existence is we live modern lives, informed by traditional values and contemporary realities, and that we wish to live those lives on our terms.” Amen. 7.5/10
The Inconvenient Indian; A curious account of native people in North America Thomas King, 2012
King draws in the white reader with humour and bits of dark history, so that this reader feels ashamed/ uncomfortable but unable to put the book down. Labelling an “account” allows King to avoid the discipline of the historian and helped me accept the heavy-handed (though deserved) guilt trip for settler and Christian oppression of native first peoples with few words paid to failings within and of aboriginal communities, themselves.
Mixing US and CDN experience plays to the sovereignty of aboriginals and their relationship to the land, but I would have preferred an all-Canadian book. King ends on upbeats re: the courts recognizing aboriginal rights and effective community leadership. Plus: “The fact of native existence is we live modern lives, informed by traditional values and contemporary realities, and that we wish to live those lives on our terms.” Amen. 7.5/10
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