Authentic Indians: Episodes of Encounter from the Late-Nineteenth-Century Northwest Coast

by Paige Raibmon

Book Overview

In this innovative history, Paige Raibmon examines the political ramifications of ideas about "real Indians." Focusing on the Northwest Coast in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, she describes how government officials, missionaries, anthropologists, reformers, settlers, and tourists developed definitions of Indian authenticity based on such binaries as Indian versus White, traditional versus modern, and uncivilized versus civilized...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0822335476
• ISBN13: 9780822335474
• Release Date: July 2005
• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Length: 328 Pages
• Weight: 1.08 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.2" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Good Scholarship, Fascinating Study

Raibmon analyzes how Indians in the late nineteenth century found themselves straddling concepts of modernity and authenticity that were constructed in opposition to one another. Government officials and Reservation agents continually pressed them towards "moderninty," while anthropologists and an emerging middle class white culture, interested in Native culture, continued to push them towards "authenticity." Within the confines of this struggle, Indians began to find ways they could use their emerging store of newly discovered "cultural capital" to their advantage. Raibmon's book contains fantastic scholarship and addresses a topic that needed to be studied more. Her study is fascinating. One of my personal favorites.

simply incredible

if you are going to read 1 book on Indians in the next year, read this one. the author may have written the 'best in world' discussion of how and by whom Indians are defined. probably the best book on the subject since "The White Man's Indian : Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present" by Robert F. Berkhofer