Absolutely brilliant and hilarious, Vine Deloria Jr. has to be one of my new favorite authors of history between American Indians and white colonizers.

There are so many witty and pointedly insightful moments throughout this book, but I will here simply paste the few notes I took while listening to it.

This book has me cracking up multiple times in the first chapter. He recalls from his days [as the head of an organization whose name I forget] how almost every day some white would come to his office and proudly declare they had some Indian blood. All but one person claimed it was on their grandmother’s side, leading Deloria to calculate that for the first three hundred years of colonization, these Indian tribes - most popularly Cherokee, then Mohawk and Chippewa - were entirely female. LMAO!!! He theorizes that they were uncomfortable with the idea of having a Native male ancestor because it brought notions of a savage warrior undeserving of their family history, but an “Indian Princess Grandmother?!” Perfect: genteel, graceful, beautiful, elegant, and feminine. He says after a while of hearing all the white people claiming to be part Indian, he started to affirm them and understood or sympathized with their need to identify that way. He hoped that one day they would be able to accept themselves and leave [Native Americans] alone. Howww

After listing and describing the work of various Indian organizations, he dryly says, “There are a number of white-led organizations that attempt to help Indians. Since we would be better off without them, I will not mention them, except to acknowledge that they do exist.” HAHAHAH