A review by theobstacleistheway
The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America by Thomas King

4.0

This is closer to 3.5/5, if that distinction matters.

A book about Indian (the author's preferred term) relations with whites from first contact until present day, in Canada and the USA, written by an Indian. Thomas King certainly has a wry wit, which makes the first quarter of this book a bit less of a slog, but a slog none-the-less. My primary interest in reading this book was to get a better understanding of the history of Indian-White relations, as well as gain some insight into how some these issues might be resolved. King mentions near the beginning his refusal to use citations, and though I am willing to trust him, it is certainly vastly preferable to have references for a non-fiction work such as this. It doesn't even seem to be that difficult given the nature of his references.

Those complaints aside I would certainly recommend this book, if only to get the perspective of someone on the other side of the equation. There is no magic bullet, or recipe that the author posits to solve centuries of strife between indigenous people and the Europeans that settled in North America, but after reading the book I was more readily able to understand why that is.

A book on this topic could be thousands of pages, but King provides a succinct overview. I am already fairly familiar with a lot of the topics involved, but for someone who has little experience with them, this could be necessary reading.