Fergus Bordewich. Killing the White Man's Indian: Reinventing Native
American
at the End of the Twentieth Century. New York: Doubleday, 1996. 400 pp.
Bibliography and index. $27.50 (cloth), ISBN 0-385-42035-8.

Reviewed for H-PCAACA by Robert C. Doyle, University of Strasbourg

Killing the White Man's Indian is a powerful book that takes readers well
beyond
the long-held myths, what the author calls the "patina of popular culture"
17), and headlong into the harsh complexities of Indian identity as it
exist
today. Leaving behind any taint of mindless stereotyping, Bordewich takes
on the
massive and seemingly impenetrable social questions present among the
Native
American tribes today: Who are the Indians of the 1990s? Are they part of
American society, and if so, on what terms? How are Indians to make use of
Western culture? What does it mean to be "Indian" in the modern world?
With on-site research that often required a great deal of direct
observation and
interaction with tribal members around the country, the author shows
conclusively that he's no preacher or cheap polemicist eagerly
propagandizing
anyone's cause. For example, he explains why mystics like Chief Seattle
and
Black Elk have achieved near godlike status among many environmental
ideologues;
then he reminds us that the historical Seattle's mysticism was more a
figment of
Ted Perry's theatrical imagination in 1972 than anything close to reality.
 Black
Elk, although his commentary in John G. Neihardt's Black Elk Speaks (1979)
achieved near guru status among members of the Native American Church,
radi
environmentalists, and other modern animists, Black Elk himself was a
devou
practicing Roman Catholic during his adult life (226) and traveled to Sing
Prison, among many other places, to work as a cathechist preaching the
Christian                                            
Gospel. Conversely, the author traces the true horrors inflicted on tribal
integrity in remarkable detail and fairness: war, conquest, and diseases
duringcontact in the eigtheenth and nineteenth centuries; illegal removals
and
treaties that meant little when land and wealth entered the equation; the
lasting humiliations imposed by the Dawes Act of 1887; the paternalism of
the
Bureau of Indian Affairs up to the present era; grave robbing and souvenir
grabbing by visitors and anthropologists, and the continuing alphabet soup
federal legislation that from 1969 has granted the tribes increasing
levels
political sovereignty. Institutions like Harvard University and the
Universal
of Nebraska have returned so-called human and cultural artifacts for
burial
proper tribal use; the BIA now acts more in an advisory role than as a
dictator,
and the tribes themselves are directing their own affairs internally. But,
according to Bordewich's research, therein lies a rub: where wealth and
power
appear, can graft and corruption be far behind, even in traditional
communities?
Bordewich takes no sides; human failure, like success, has no identity.     
Without any doubt, the most shocking chapter, at least for this reviewer,
w
entitled "A Scene Most Resembling Hell," a stand-up description of
real-tim
alcoholism on the reservations today. It took courage to approach this
topic
when we all know how sensitive it remains. It took courage to cite James
O.
Whittaker's incisive "Alcohol and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe: A
Twenty-Y
Follow-Up Study" (1982), which examined alcoholism scientifically.
Bordewic
concludes from the literature and from his own experience that alcoholism
is
virulent among Indians, but it is no more resistant to treatment among
them
than
it is to other Americans (p. 263).

The author then traces the heated cauldron of Indian sovereignty, one of
the
most gripping and potentially divisive problems in Indian country today.
What
does it mean to be a nation? Can there really be a "nation" inside a
nation
are the tribes playing with rhetorical, if not political, dynamite?
Certain
the reservations' legal status is complex, if not mystifyingly foreign, to    
outsiders. Why can a tribe open a fully functioning gambling casino in a
st
that prohibits a state lottery, or even bingo at the local firemens'
carniv
Where does the money go? Who or what is accountable for revenues? Why can
some
places serve clientel seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day? These
and
other question only begin to approach the author'exposition about life in
Indian
country now.

Killing the White Man's Indian is an eloquent and disturbing book that
need
be read and reflected upon. It tells a sad story but is yet filled with
hope and
trust that Native Americans will continue to find their own way in
multicultural
America--or make one.

    This review is copyrighted (c) 1996 by H-Net and the
     Popular Culture and the American Culture Associations.
    It may be reproduced electronically for educational or
    scholarly use. The Associations reserve print rights
    and permissions. (Contact: P.C.Rollins at the following
   electronic address: Rollins@osuunx.ucc.okstate.edu)