Review of The American Indian and the Problem of History

Authors

Robert H. Keller, Western Washington University

Date of this Version

1988

Document Type

Article

Comments

Published in Great Plains Quarterly WINTER 1988. Copyright 1988 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska—Lincoln.

Abstract

Long before it became fashionable in the 1960s, John G. Neihardt's Black Elk Speaks, the life of an Oglala Sioux holy man, posed problems for historians and anthropologists. Questions of authenticity have been largely solved by scholars such as Raymond DeMallie, but not so the problem of whether historians can incorporate Black Elk's non-western, nonlipear concepts of the world and human affairs into their history. In short, how does a radically different native metaphysic influence writing about Indian-White relations?