![]() ![]() In a series of page-turning chapters, King guides us through Native history from contact, but instead of moving in chronological order, or from east to west, he never stays in one era or one place for too long. That’s about it.” He writes that “there has never been a good collective noun because there never was a collective to begin with,” but for the purposes of this book, which draws on the experiences of both (Canadian) First Nations and Native Americans (in the U.S.), he uses Indian as a blanket term, joking that it is “the one name to rule them all.” Likewise, King uses White as shorthand for the various settler cultures in North America. King illustrates the diversity of these cultures early in the book with an anecdote about his drum group, writing that the members were “Anishinaabe, Metis, Coastal Salish, Cree and Cherokee” and had “nothing much in common. King’s literary patchwork quilt is particularly apt for a study of native North Americans, a group made up of hundreds of individual nations and language groups. Instead King draws from each of these forms to create a richly layered story, one which combines the strengths of multiple genres. ![]() It is a hybrid text, neither history, essay, nor memoir. ![]() ![]() The Inconvenient Indian is no exception, and King’s “curious account” of First Nations history is as idiosyncratic and gripping as any of his fiction. All of his works, from his novels to his 2003 Massey Lectures and CBC radio series Dead Dog Café Comedy Hour, are a mix of powerful storytelling, deadpan humour and deep intelligence. ![]()
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