68 pages • 2 hours read
Thomas KingThe Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 5-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “We Are Sorry”
Chapter 5 focuses on the different ways that white people have practiced a policy of “assimilation” in their dealings with Indigenous people. Advocates of assimilation treated Indigenous people as “humans at an early point in the evolution of the species” who could be bettered through the introduction of civilization and Christianity (102). Assimilation differs from policies of “extermination,” which argued for the death of Indigenous peoples according to the logic of the “survival of the fittest” (101). King argues that assimilation combined with extermination in the 19th century, leading to “assaults that sought to dismantle Native culture [… and] replace it with something that Whites could recognize” (102).
Many early advocates of assimilation tactics were Christian missionaries, such as the Jesuits or Puritans, who formed Christian schools and other initiatives to convert Indigenous tribes to Christianity. However, assimilation did not become a widespread federal policy until the end of the 19th century, when retired US Army officer Richard Pratt began advocating for the creation of special schools to teach Indigenous youth to adopt White customs and values. Pratt proclaimed that these schools would “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man,” and declared that any trace of Indigenous culture must be erased from his students (107). Pratt’s beliefs were based around “environmental determinism,” which argued that Indigenous people’s supposedly “savage” behavior was not due to genetics but due to the society that they grew up in (108).
Known as “residential schools,” Pratt’s schools took Indigenous children away from their parents, forcing them to learn the English language and adopt white social values. King argues that Pratt took “his experience as a soldier and a warden” to his schools, where the children were often subject to harsh disciplinary measures (110). Abuse and poor nutrition led to some schools having a mortality rate of more than 30%. Despite this, the schools spread throughout the United States and Canada, becoming a common feature of their policies toward Indigenous peoples in the first half of the 20th century.
Both countries eventually commissioned reports to investigate the effectiveness of residential schools. The US report was compiled by Lewis Meriam and released in 1928, and it offered an “extremely critical” view of the effects residential schools had on Indigenous people (116). Though the Canadian Hawthorn Report, released in 1966 and 1967, criticized the residential schools, King feels that the report still judges Indigenous people according to “White goals and standards” (118). Despite the problems caused by assimilation policies, neither government made any official apology until the 21st century. Though King is grateful for these apologies, he criticizes both. While the Canadian apology acknowledges “the abuse that Native people had endured in the residential school system,” it fails to apologize for other forms of violence caused by the Canadian government (122). In comparison, while the US apology is more far-reaching and acknowledges the full history of anti-Indigenous violence, King views it as a largely symbolic gesture without practical impact.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Like Cowboys and Indians”
In Chapter 6 King considers various struggles between Indigenous and white people over the ownership of Indigenous lands. The chapter opens with King discussing the 1887 General Allotment Act, which caused the tensions of colonialism to “flare up again” like a disease (128). The act was meant to forcibly assimilate the majority of Indigenous adults into white society by targeting the Indigenous practice of holding “land in common” (129). While white Western society saw “private ownership of land” as one of its “cornerstones,” Indigenous tribes typically saw the land as belonging to the entire tribe rather than to any individual (129). Advocates of the General Allotment Act, also referred to as the Dawes Act, believed that teaching Indigenous people to practice private land ownership would lead to their full participation in white, capitalist society. The Dawes Act broke up Indigenous reservations into parcels of land to be owned by individual tribal members, who were offered US citizenship for agreeing to allotment. King notes, however, that the effect of allotment as a policy was to “liquidate all of the reservations” in a number of states, leading to the loss of Indigenous land to “White settlers and business interests” (131).
In the 1930s, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration sought to correct the harms of the Dawes Act through the Indian Reorganization Act. The new law ceased the practice of dividing Indigenous reservations and sought to return lost land to the tribes through various means. However, the start of World War II left the government with little energy and few resources to enforce the act. In 1953 the US government shifted to a policy of “termination,” which sought to terminate tribal recognitions and eliminate reservations.
In the 1960s the continued loss of Indigenous lands led to several protest movements organized by Indigenous activists. One of the most widely publicized actions was the occupation of Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay by “eighty-nine American Indians from a variety of tribes” (139). The island had been a prison until its closure in 1963, and the activists sought to have the land returned to Indigenous tribes. The occupation received considerable media attention and was widely supported by the public, with numerous Hollywood celebrities visiting the island.
King contrasts the occupation of Alcatraz with the activities of the American Indian Movement (AIM), “a loosely managed group of Native men and women” that formed in 1968 to protest police violence against Indigenous people in Minneapolis (145). However, the movement soon grew to protest the US government’s treatment of Indigenous people more widely, with its members organizing several occupations and protests in the early 1970s. The movement culminated in 1973, when AIM members occupied Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in support of the town’s “traditional Lakota” who were quarreling with the local tribal leadership (149). The ensuing occupation led to a 71-day standoff between AIM and the US federal government, and it lacked the public support that the occupation of Alcatraz had received. Though many have since criticized AIM’s “militant” tactics, King argues that one can only understand AIM’s actions in the context of the long history of racist violence that Indigenous people have endured.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Forget About It”
In Chapter 7, King wonders if he should try to “stop complaining about the past” and its history of racist violence against Indigenous people (159). King’s rhetorical gesture could be seen as an ironic response to white people who claim that racism against Indigenous people is a thing of the past. King considers Indigenous-white relations since 1985, when his “second child was born,” and then lists the long history of injustices he would have to forget, including “Wounded Knee, 1890 […] along with Louis Riel and the Trail of Tears” (159). The rest of the chapter surveys how Indigenous people have been treated by the US and Canadian governments since 1985 to investigate whether racism truly is a thing of the past.
King looks at several Canadian laws that have dealt with the legacies of Indigenous treaties. One of these is Bill C-31, which regulates which Indigenous can be considered “Status Indians,” or “those Indians who are recognized as Indians by the federal government” (167). The law forbids non-Status individuals to gain Indian Status through marriage, even if that individual is “full blood.” The law further stipulates that “Indians” will lose their “Indian Status” if two generations of a family both marry non-Status individuals. King argues that the effect of this law is to greatly reduce the number of Status Indians and possibly even fully eliminate them. If there are few or no Status Indians left in Canada, the Canadian government would no longer have to honor treaties dictating that they provide funds or lands to Status Indians. King argues that this law is yet another attempt by the Canadian government to attack Indigenous societies.
King also explores how Indigenous tribes have been treated in the United States since 1985. In King’s eyes, the years following 1985 have been “dominated by the rise of Native gaming,” owing to the 1976 Supreme Court case Bryan v. Itasca County. Though the case was about whether states could tax private property on reservations, it ruled that “states lacked the authority to regulate Indian activities that took place on Indian reservations” (177), providing a legal basis for tribes to open casinos. According to King, the idea of such “agency and independence was just too much to bear” and led to a widespread challenge by the US government and the casino industry to limit Indigenous gaming (177).
King closes the chapter by describing various instances of racism that Indigenous people have continued to endure since 1985. One of these is a personal anecdote, which occurred shortly after King and his family moved into a new neighborhood. King received a flyer in the mailbox from a local realtor that warned of an Indigenous family moving into the neighborhood. King believes the flyer implied that the presence of Indigenous people made the neighborhood dangerous and would cause property values to drop. King also describes a number of racist murders against Indigenous people, which were frequently met with inaction by local police departments. King argues that these incidents attest to the lingering legacy of racism: “The history I offered to forget, the past I offered to burn, turns out to be our present” (192).
Chapters 5-7 Analysis
King explores how the US government and white settlers waged a war on Indigenous cultures and social customs throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. At bottom, King argues, what appeared to be a war over culture was really about The Role of Land in Indigenous-White Relations. While the United States and Canada were initially content to corral Indigenous peoples onto reservations, they later searched for new policies upon realizing Indigenous people were holding on to their customs and traditions. Such behavior was an affront to the beliefs of white settlers, who saw reservations as highly desirable yet undeveloped land, and who believed that Indigenous people were obstructing the development of capitalist growth.
King organizes policies that sought to break up reservations into “two impulses”: “extermination and assimilation” (101). Extermination viewed Indigenous people as clinging to a form of society that was out of step with modernity, and its advocates saw no issue with killing Indigenous people if it meant that white Western culture could continue to grow. Advocates of assimilation, such as Christian settlers, believed that Indigenous people were not inherently “savage” and hoped that they “could be civilized and educated” to embrace white Western values (102). While assimilation may seem less violent than extermination, both policies sought to eradicate Indigenous cultures and traditions, and King describes assimilation’s tactics as “assaults that sought to dismantle Native culture with missionary zeal and humanitarian paternalism, and to replace it with something that Whites could recognize” (102).
Assimilation can be traced back to the first settlers who arrived in North America. The Puritans sought to educate the Indigenous people they encountered through so-called “praying towns” built on the periphery of early settlements. Assimilation became a major policy in the late 1800s, when former army warden Richard Pratt advocated for the residential school system as a means of educating Indigenous children. The violence that lay at the core of Pratt’s approach is captured by his motto: “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man” (107). King describes how Pratt’s tactics separated young children from their parents and forced them into a harsh environment comparable to “a military camp or a prison” (111).
While Pratt’s schooling focused on assimilating children, the policy of allotment sought to force Indigenous adults to live according to white Western standards. Allotment primarily targeted Indigenous reservations, where ownership of land was held in common for the entire tribe. The goal of allotment was to pressure Indigenous people into dividing up their land into segments of privately owned property; the government incentivized the deal by offering US citizenship in return. Though allotment only affected practices of land ownership, King argues that its actual goal was to force Indigenous people into participating in the capitalist market: “[S]o long as Indians were allowed to hold land in common, they would lose the advantages that free enterprise offered” (130). The ultimate effect of allotment was to reduce the size of reservations and transform Indians into “individual, private land owners” (131). While allotment as a policy ended with President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Indian Reorganization Act, King writes that Indian reservations are still under attack by the US government—evidence of The Precarity of Indigenous Sovereignty. In Chapter 7 he describes how the United States has tried to limit the construction of tribal casinos, which he sees as a clear attack on the self-determination of Indigenous peoples.
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