As is evident from his book Green Grass, Running Water, Thomas King is interested in the mythologizing around (American) Indians. If there can be said to be a focus to The Inconvenient Indian (Amazon, B&N, Book Depository), it’s that: What mythologies exist, what purposes they have served and do serve, and what relation they bear to the lived experience of North American Indians.

I say if there can be said to be a focus, but I don’t mean it as a criticism, so I hope it won’t be taken as one. King is not attempting to write a comprehensive history of Indians in Canada and the US. He frequently refers readers to other sources, and I ended up writing down a bunch of book titles to go investigate hereafter. The Inconvenient Indian is about the efforts of the US and Canadian governments and citizens to wrangle Indians into a form that felt manageable; to create a narrative of Indianness that was comfortable for white people and engendered no sense of obligation. And yet, as King repeatedly demonstrates, Indians have doggedly insisted on their own mythologies, their own personhood, and their own narratives.

Dead Indians are dignified, noble, silent, suitably garbed. And dead. Live Indians are invisible, unruly, disappointing. And breathing. One is a romantic reminder of a heroic but fictional past. The other is simply an unpleasant, contemporary surprise. …Let’s be clear, Live Indians dance at powwows. And when we dance, when we sing at the drum, when we perform ceremonies, we are not doing it for North America’s entertainment. Where North America sees Dead Indians come to life, we see our families and our relations. We do these things to remind ourselves who we are, to remind ourselves where we come from, and to remind ourselves of our relationship with the earth.

Some of King’s stories were familiar, like the lionizing of a failed military operation we call Custer’s Last Stand; the loss of life on the Trail of Tears; the Christian boarding schools that took young Indian children from their families, abused them, and taught them to forget their own languages and cultural traditions. But many other stories were new to me, particularly stories that had happened in the twentieth century. Teddy Roosevelt created Wheeler Park in 1906 by taking almost 50,000 acres from the Taos Pueblo, including a lake that is sacred to them. Sixty-four years and numerous insulting compromise offers later, the Taos got their land back.

Usually nobody gets their land back, even after many decades. Usually — as in the case of the Lakota, whose 1868 treaty guaranteeing them land was ignored and one of whose sacred mountains was turned into the tourist attraction Mount Rushmore — whoever took the land keeps it. I knew that Mount Rushmore should properly belong to an Indian tribe. I didn’t know that the US Supreme Court ruled in 1980 that the Black Hills were illegally taken from the Lakota, and that the US Congress could permit the Lakota’s claim to be heard again (it had previously been dismissed in Claims Court). And then the US still did not give the land back to the Lakota. That is still going on.

Some tribes — King admiringly notes — are buying up land and asking the government to add that land to their reservation.

This is not merely a return to a communal past. It is a shrewd move to preserve and expand an indigenous land base for the benefit of future generations.

It’s an excellent idea, although it apparently brings out a lot of ongoing prejudice and paternalism. I stopped bookmarking pages that quoted white people who justified theft and treaty-breaking by complaining that the Indians weren’t using the land for anything productive anyway so why shouldn’t there be a dam/factory/whatever on that land? People said too many appalling things. It was too many bookmarks. I gave up. Two-thirds of the way through the book, I didn’t even bookmark a quote where Mayor Bloomberg (this mayor! our current mayor!) advised the then-governor of New York to get a cowboy hat and a shotgun for use in a dispute with the Seneca.

(Yes, he said that. Those words. “Get yourself a cowboy hat and a shotgun.”)

Thomas King is angry, and The Inconvenient Indian will make you angry. It’s good. It is worth being angry over. The book is a quick read, because Thomas King makes jokes and because it’s not a history book, and it’s a very worthwhile (and enjoyable, in a lot of ways) read. Highly recommended.

Note: I received this review copy from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. Also, if you buy a book through one of my affiliate links, I get a small amount of money.

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So Ana and Iris are hosting a Long-Awaited Reads Month in January! I intended to read something much more ambitious for it, but honestly, I have been awaiting Green Grass, Running Water longer than almost anything on my TBR list. Part of me had given up hope that I’d ever be able to read it because the library never has it. Never. No library ever. I can place holds until my face falls off and this book will never, ever arrive.

Green Grass, Running Water is hard to put a synopsis too. There’s a lot going on here. The central plotline is about four Indians — they are called Ishmael, Hawkeye, The Lone Ranger, and Robinson Crusoe — who have escaped from a hospital and are telling origin stories. They might be women or they might be men. It’s unclear. The stories they are telling all feature women, certainly, and the nurse who was on duty when they vanished is sure they were women. The women of their stories are constantly running up against Christian myths and white soldiers, which does not typically end well for them.

Other parts of the book deal with a group of Indians who all come from the same reservation and have lived their lives on it or away, or on it and away. They are all dealing with their heritage in different ways or not at all, but the action of the book pulls them all back together for the Sun Dance. One is considering having a child. One made a few small mistakes in his life that prevented him from having the job and education he wanted. One is holding back a major hydraulics project by refusing to leave the house his mother built by hand. All of them encounter, in one way or another, the old escaped Indians.

It’s not always clear what’s happening in Green Grass, Running Water, which can bother me in some books. And it bothered me a bit in this book, but because the characters were always so willing to go with it, I was willing to go with it too. My favorite parts were the stories told by the four old Indians. I loved the clash between the Indian stories and the Christian stories. In particular, I loved how these stories dealt with the wiping away of Indian identity and individuality by subsuming them into manageable ideas of Indians, figures subservient to the protagonists; and how the four old Indians each ended up taking over the protagonist identities. For instance:

Here, says a nice-looking man with a grim mouth, and he hands Changing Woman a towel. What’s your name?

Changing Woman, says Changing Woman.

Call me Ishmael, says the young man. What’s your favorite month?

They’re all fine, says Changing Woman.

Oh dear, says Ishmael, looking through a book. Let’s try again. What’s your name?

Changing Woman.

That just won’t do either, says the young man, and he quickly thumbs through the book again. Here, he says, poking a page with his finger. Queequeg. I’ll call you Queequeg. This book has a Queequeg in it, and this story is supposed to have a Queequeg in it, but I’ve looked all over this ship and there aren’t any Queequegs. I hope you don’t mind.

Ishmael is a nice name, says Changing Woman.

But we already have an Ishmael, says Ishmael. And we do so need a Queequeg.

But in the end of this story, Ishmael drowns and Changing Woman takes up his name.

My favorite things, as you can probably tell, were all the parts that dealt with white portrayals of Indians. This comes up over and over again throughout the book, not only in the stories told by the Indians, but in the media consumed by the other characters. Eli, a retired professor living in his mother’s hand-built house, reads a lot of Westerns where the noble Indian character nobly gives up his white girlfriend and dies nobly in battle. Alberta and Charlie end up in the same hotel watching the same spaghetti western where the savage Indians are outnumbered and slaughtered by the brave white men. All of these parts are gorgeously acerbic.

Just, way to go, Thomas King. Green Grass Running Water was everything other bloggers have said it is. It’s funny and heartbreaking and strange and delightful. I am indebted to the always-lovely Heather for sending me her copy. In the spirit of passing on the joy, I am offering this copy to you, my fellow bloggers! Drop me a note in the comments if you want it, and I’ll draw a name at the end of the month. International readers are welcome to enter! This book is good enough I’m willing to pay the extra postage to let you enjoy it.

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