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(More customer reviews)I was born in 1975. I lived on the Blackfeet Reservation in Browning, MT from the time I was 5 years old until my third year of college. Plus my whole family is from there going back to whenever the Blackfeet came together as a tribe. And I read this book so I guess that makes me highly qualified to read this book. First I think ill mention some things that were not in the book. Woody used to write a column for the Missoulian and the Independent in Missoula, MT. Now he teaches at the Blackfeet Community College. My parents know Woody and I know of him but dont think I have ever met him. Same thing about most of the people from Browning that he talks about I know of them but I dont know them personally because their from the baby boomer generation of Blackfeet. I think this book is highly valuable to anyone wanting to learn about Native Americans because Woody very courageously tells the truth about contemporary reservation life. Woody goes where the academics and journalists are too scared to go because the truth too disturbing to the public. Their writing is usually either superficial and skin-deep or so weighed down by dry statistics
that one becomes bored to death. Woody's writing cuts to the bone in it's description of contemporary life on the Blackfeet Reservation. One part that I related to was the abuse he suffered from the racist white teachers in Cut Bank while he went to school there. This seems to be a common experience for natives in Montana. The white towns that lie on their borders seem to always be populated with people who are extremely racist against Native Americans. I think the reason for this might be because they know ther economies depend on the Indians staying poor so they will have to shop in their towns and never develop economies of their own. I know in Browning the Blackfeet have a long history of being exploited by the white people in Cut Bank. They have stolen land from the Blackfeet and the Blackfeet do a lot of shopping there because the price of food is lower there. While going to school in Browning I also experienced a lot of abuse from racist white teachers. These teachers even go so far as to segregate themselves from the Blackfeet by living in a town ten miles away called East Glacier. I always felt sorry for the community of Blackfeet Woody comes from that lives near Cut Bank and goes to school there because most of them become extremely brainwashed like the Manchurian Candidate. They are so abused by the white people that live there that they start to believe that they are white and deny that they are Blackfeet no matter how dark their skin color is. One incident in particular that I remember is a time when I visited the Blackfeet Community in a small group of houses near Cut Bank called Seville. I was a teenager then in the 1990s visiting a relatives house with my two counsins. My younger female cousin was playing outside when a Cut Bank Blackfeet kid and his two white friends came up to her and started throwing rocks at her and calling her a f...ing Indian. The weird thing is this Blackfeet kid was extremely dark and my cousin could pass for white. Kind of bizarre being called a f...ing Indian by someone who's darker than you are. This book is pretty much the story of Woody's life from the time he was born until the present day. Throughout the book I felt he was mostly describing what it means to be an Indian in todays's world than anything else. If I had one criticism it would be that he didnt talk enough about the Browning Blackfeet but maybe he'll do that in another book. The only thing I disagreed with Woody on is througout the book he cites alcolholism as the root cause of the Blackfeet's misery. I disagreed I think most of the Blackfeet's problems stem from poverty. Theyve had a 70% unemployment rate for going on four decades now and nobody is doing anything about it. Ofcourse money isnt everything but it does have the power to feed, house, and cloth the Blackfeet and help bring back their culture and religion. If I were selling this book I would say that it's greatest value is that it is a book written by a Blackfeet who goes beyond the superficial reasons the general Native American Studies give for why the Native Americans are stuck in the poverty they are in. Plus it is a eyewitness account to Native American History. And in the end it is just pretty much a good read that is short(130 pages)but fluid.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Viet Cong at Wounded Knee: The Trail of a Blackfeet Activist (American Indian Lives)
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