I learned so much from this book. Written with humour and deep compassion, I found myself referring to Wikipedia to learn more about the content presented while reading. Outstanding presentation of what got us to here.

King is incredibly talented in how he neatly crams SO MUCH information into one average length book.

I love King’s dark humour and his straight-up no eff’s given fact sharing. I had my jaw on the ground for some of the things I read in this - colonialism and white supremacy is fricken horrible y’all. We also have a lot of work to do and some heads to pull out of asses.

I give this a 4 because while the information and stories are so so SO important and well-presented, I was often wishing the book were done.

Much of this information is not new to me (Social Studies minor), though the information about American Indigenous concerns is very interesting and not talked about in any of the Canadian history courses I had to take.

All-in-all, the information in this book should be read by EVERYONE. Not just academics. Not just Indigenous people. Not just white settler Canadians / Americans. Everyone. Though prepared to be gut-punched a few times.

If I would have picked up this book and not struggled through some of it, I would have given it a 5. Though valuable information, it was a LOT, case study after case study. Some of it felt a bit repetitious. This all being said, PLEASE READ THIS BOOK.

So witty!! An incredibly well written and clever/sarcastic account. I learned a lot and wished the book was longer. Incredibly accessible account of Indigenous history in N. America.

[The term “Indians” is used in this review because it is the term that King uses.]⁣
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This is one of the most important books I’ve ever read. Thomas King is a storyteller and that really comes through in The Inconvenient Indian. There are so many dates, events, treaties, and people talked about in here, but King creates a narrative flow. He’s telling you the story of American Indians, and he often interjects with his own thoughts and stories from his personal life. I could read this a dozen times and take something different away from each read. ⁣
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There were so many different moments throughout this book that showed me just how little I know about Indigenous People. I really appreciated the way King laid out the book, starting with the lighter, more superficial topics like media portrayals at the beginning, before diving into the horrors that were Indian Residential Schools, and ending with the drawn-out legal battles to do with treaties & land claims. This is clever, because it’s easy to think about Disney’s factually-inaccurate Pocahontas movie, but King masterfully increases the complexity of the topics without the reader even realizing. ⁣
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I can’t believe we were never taught about Indian Residential Schools. These were aimed at “assimilating” Indians to American culture, and resulted in children being removed from their homes and brought to boarding schools where they were lucky to survive. This is a horrible stain on North American history, and I can’t believe that this book was the first I’d ever heard of it. I also couldn’t believe the amount of times the government decided to go back on its treaties, or ignore them altogether. It’s disheartening but important.⁣
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Please read this book if you live in North America. I cannot state enough how disappointed I am in the American education system for failing to teach us about the people who were here first. About the people who’s land we stole, who continue to be marginalized and taken advantage of. This book was so well-written and enlightening, and I feel that everyone in North America needs to understand this history to be a better person and a better citizen.

It's too bad that Thomas King prefers writing fiction to nonfiction, because I love his nonfiction. This feels like a fleshed-out version of The Truth About Stories, and though it gets bleak at times, King's wit kept me turning the pages.