Everything You Know About Indians is Wrong (Indigenous Americas)

New
Illustrated
2009
$23.76

In this sweeping work of memoir and commentary, leading cultural critic Paul Chaat Smith illustrates with dry wit and brutal honesty the contradictions of life in \u201cthe Indian business.\u201d Raised in suburban Maryland and Oklahoma, Smith dove head first into the political radicalism of the 1970s, working with the American Indian Movement until it dissolved into dysfunction and infighting. Afterward he lived in New York, the city of choice for political exiles, and eventually arrived in Washington, D.C., at the newly minted National Museum of the American Indian (\u201ca bad idea whose time has come\u201d) as a curator. In his journey from fighting activist to federal employee, Smith tells us he has discovered at least two things: there is no one true representation of the American Indian experience, and even the best of intentions sometimes ends in catastrophe. Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong is a highly entertaining and, at times, searing critique of the deeply disputed role of American Indians in the United States. In \u201cA Place Called Irony,\u201d Smith whizzes through his early life, showing us the ironic pop culture signposts that marked this Native American\u2019s coming of age in suburbia: \u201cWe would order Chinese food and slap a favorite video into the machine-the Grammy Awards or a Reagan press conference-and argue about Cyndi Lauper or who should coach the Knicks.\u201d In \u201cLost in Translation,\u201d Smith explores why American Indians are so often misunderstood and misrepresented in today\u2019s media: \u201cWe\u2019re lousy television.\u201d In \u201cEvery Picture Tells a Story,\u201d Smith remembers his Comanche grandfather as he muses on the images of American Indians as \u201ca half-remembered presence, both comforting and dangerous, lurking just below the surface.\u201d Smith walks this tightrope between comforting and dangerous, offering unrepentant skepticism and, ultimately, empathy. \u201cThis book is called Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong, but it\u2019s a book title, folks, not to be taken literally. Of course I don\u2019t mean everything, just most things. And \u2018you\u2019 really means we, as in all of us.\u201d

Synopsis

In this sweeping work of memoir and commentary, leading cultural critic Paul Chaat Smith illustrates with dry wit and brutal honesty the contradictions of life in \u201cthe Indian business.\u201d Raised in suburban Maryland and Oklahoma, Smith dove head first into the political radicalism of the 1970s, working with the American Indian Movement until it dissolved into dysfunction and infighting. Afterward he lived in New York, the city of choice for political exiles, and eventually arrived in Washington, D.C., at the newly minted National Museum of the American Indian (\u201ca bad idea whose time has come\u201d) as a curator. In his journey from fighting activist to federal employee, Smith tells us he has discovered at least two things: there is no one true representation of the American Indian experience, and even the best of intentions sometimes ends in catastrophe. Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong is a highly entertaining and, at times, searing critique of the deeply disputed role of American Indians in the United States. In \u201cA Place Called Irony,\u201d Smith whizzes through his early life, showing us the ironic pop culture signposts that marked this Native American\u2019s coming of age in suburbia: \u201cWe would order Chinese food and slap a favorite video into the machine-the Grammy Awards or a Reagan press conference-and argue about Cyndi Lauper or who should coach the Knicks.\u201d In \u201cLost in Translation,\u201d Smith explores why American Indians are so often misunderstood and misrepresented in today\u2019s media: \u201cWe\u2019re lousy television.\u201d In \u201cEvery Picture Tells a Story,\u201d Smith remembers his Comanche grandfather as he muses on the images of American Indians as \u201ca half-remembered presence, both comforting and dangerous, lurking just below the surface.\u201d Smith walks this tightrope between comforting and dangerous, offering unrepentant skepticism and, ultimately, empathy. \u201cThis book is called Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong, but it\u2019s a book title, folks, not to be taken literally. Of course I don\u2019t mean everything, just most things. And \u2018you\u2019 really means we, as in all of us.\u201d

$23.76

Quantity

2 in stock

More Information

Format: Illustrated
Pages: 192
Edition: Illustrated
Publisher: University Of Minnesota Press
Published: 14 Apr 2009
ISBN 10: 0816656010
ISBN 13: 9780816656011

Media Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In this acerbic collection of essays, Comanche cultural critic and art curator Smith (Like a Hurricane) riffs on the romantic stereotypes of Indian as spiritual masters and first environmentalists, as tragic victims of technology and civilization, as primal beings brimming with nomad authenticity, their every artifact a gem of folk art. Such tropes, he complains, hide the riotous complexity of the modern Indian experience, which he visits in pieces that explore his grandfather's Christian church, Sitting Bull's savvy manipulation of his media image (he had an agent) and the author's own Comanche forebears, who were both world-class barbarians and avid adopters of the white man's gadgetry. These loose-limbed essays range all over the landscape, from Hollywood westerns to the 1973 siege of Wounded Knee to (somewhat obscurely) the contemporary Indian art scene. Smith doesn't entirely square his view of Indians as just plain folks with his advancing of a unique Indian cultural perspective, but his keen, skeptical eye makes such ironies both amusing and enlightening.

Author Bio

Paul Chaat Smith is associate curator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. He is the coauthor, with Robert Warrior, of Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee.