Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Spring 1998
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 2, Spring 1998, pp. 198-99.
Abstract
Fergus M. Bordewich's foray into Native American politics and identity is disturbing on a number of different levels. It is, on the one hand, a remarkably accurate look at Native American political dilemmas, frustrations, and achievements. On the other, it is a flawed survey of what it means to be Native American in the United States. It lacks a clear critical framework and races willy-nilly from one group to another, judging achievements on the basis of economic success or how the tribes fit into the hierarchical apparatus that runs the nation.
Bordewich is at his finest when dealing with the American obsession with race. He writes elegantly about race, the invention of the "Indian" as the anathema of western culture, and how European invaders and Americans used imagery to justify genocide. Race was, and is, simply a social construction used to deny human rights. The color of one's skin and the texture of one's hair are simply false and useless indicators of intelligence, cultural worth, or political reliability.
Unfortunately Bordewich fails to convince after he gets to his main theme. The book is essentially an argument for dropping any "special" rights that Indians have managed to hang on to over the last five centuries. Bordewich writes that Indians are no longer Indians anymore and should, therefore, be treated as other Americans. In a revival of the modernization theory of colonialism, Bordewich argues that: (1) Indians are out-marrying at rates which will eventually destroy any kind of racial or tribal identity; (2) many Indian groups are neither racially nor culturally homogenous; (3) most Indians have more or less adopted the general economic views, political attitudes, and social constructions of the American majority; (4) Indian tribal governments, with few exceptions, are corrupt, do not have the democratic safeguards of institutional checks and balances, and have not provided sufficiently for the basic civil rights of tribal members that are enjoyed by other Americans; (5) Indians are frightening other Americans by dredging up certain dubious rights, such as tribal sovereignty, to deny these Americans, mostly whites, their rights of property and political representation; (6) Indian traditionalists are not really environmentalists as they are often portrayed, but the dupes of the tree-hugging, no-growth radicals standing in the path of scientific knowledge and progress; and (7) most Indians, just like other Americans, are immigrants and conquerors themselves. Given all of these factors, he contends, Indian assimilation has been accomplished and the attempt to maintain separate governments and tribal sovereignty is an exercise in futility. In short, modernization is an absolute fact, as immutable, to Bordewich, as the rhythm of the ocean tides.
Comments
Copyright 1998 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln