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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Inconvenient Indian, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
History and Mythology
Racism and Systemic Oppression
Land
Sovereignty
Summary
Analysis
King begins by explaining the origins of the book’s name. Fifteen years ago, he and some Aboriginal friends were trying to choose a name for their drum group. King wanted to use the tongue-in-cheek name “The Pesky Red Skins,” and he remembered the name years later as he was searching for a title for this book. While King initially wanted to call the book a “history,” his partner, Helen, and his son, both historians, thought the project was too casual to be considered history. King ultimately agreed with them.
King establishes two of the book’s central themes: the problematic idea that Indians are “Pesky” or inconvenient to North America (an idea that King criticizes and challenges), and that history is a complex, subjective concept that goes beyond mere reflections on the past.
Themes
King speaks about the differences between fiction and nonfiction, explaining that he generally prefers writing fiction, which is often neater, and with clearer “expectations of morality and justice.” He compares writing fiction to “buttering warm toast, while writing a history is herding porcupines with your elbows.” In writing The Inconvenient Indian, therefore, he has combined elements of fact and fiction, combining history with personal anecdote and conversation.
King’s remark that fiction has clearer “expectations of morality and justice” implies that morality and justice rarely exist as clearly in real life as they do in stories. His comparison of writing fiction to “buttering warm toast, while writing history is herding porcupines with your elbows” references the Prologue’s title and reinforces the notion that history is messy and complicated and rarely conforms to humanity’s notions about good and evil, morality and immortality.
Themes
King explains some of the terminology he employs in his account, explaining that he will use the term “Indian” to refer to North America’s indigenous population, even though it’s a highly generalized term. To compensate for this generalization, King will also use the term “Whites” to refer to all Caucasian peoples in North America. He uses the term “reservations” to talk about Native territory in the U.S. and “reserves” to talk about territory in Canada.
By going out of his way to explain the language he uses when discussing various groups of people, King invites readers to recognize that generalizations rarely do a good job of fully capturing an entire population. As a Native American himself, King ends up using the term “Indian,” even though the term itself is a misnomer. By adopting this inaccurate term, though, King subtly urges readers to think carefully about the words society uses to label people.
Themes
