Okay, so I know I should be blogging about the untold number of serious subjects that need attention.  But after spending the day with C-SPAN on in the background, listening to the hypocritical, spoiled-brat whining coming from the likes of Dreier and Sessions and McHenry, and now listening to Democrat Independent Barely-Closeted Republican Holy Joe Lieberman teabagging the Bush maladministration at today’s AEI ‘do . . . .

I can’t do it.  It’s Friday night, I’m tired, and I simply don’t have the stomach for it.

So, instead, I’m posting my current reading list for January, 2007.  Please post your own reading lists in the comments - I’m always looking for new reading material, and maybe we can all find some great new authors.

The Echo Maker, above, is my current bedside reading (thanks, Mom!).  I’m embarrassed to admit that I haven’t read any of Richard Powers’s stuff until now; serious oversight on my part.  What attracted me to the book (which I’ve only just started) was the title:  Although the jacket notes that "echo maker" is the name "Native Americans" gave to the sandhill crane, it was specifically the Shinob, my own ancestors, who did so.   The Shinob word is "ajijaak," which signifies the sandhill crane (the totem of one of the original clans), but which does literally translate to "echo maker."  We’ll see whether Powers extends the indigenous reference, and whether he gets it right.

 

Next, in the nonfiction category, is the latest from Hampton Sides:  Blood and Thunder:  An Epic of the American West, about Kit Carson.  No, Sides isn’t usually my style, but this one has particular resonance:  As I’ve said, I’m devoting much more time and effort to learning about my own people’s traditions, and I’m doing the same with regard to other tribes.  New Mexico apparently has the greatest number of individual tribes of any state, and I’m lucky to have access to such a wide array of spiritual, cultural, and educational traditions.  I also have a particularly good - ahem - friend from Taos Pueblo; those of you who know Taos know how steeped in Kit Carson folklore it is.  The rep on this book is that it’s the straight story on Carson, so we’ll see.

 

Next up is Michael Blake’s Indian Yell:  The Heart of an American Insurgency.  Yep, that Michael Blake - "Dances With Wolves Boy."  This book hasn’t been getting rave reviews, but then again, it’s being panned by some of the same folks who nattered on about the "authenticity" of Dances With Wolves, so I think I’ll decide for myself, thank you very much.  The main reason I want to check it out is because Blake apparently juxtaposes the Native American experience of resistance to colonial invasion with that of the insurgency in Iraq.  I may wind up disagreeing with everything he writes, but the concept’s intriguing, to say the least.

 

In a similar vein is Jonathan Lear’s Radical Hope:  Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation.  I discovered this via last week’s Times Literary Supplement, and found myself utterly frustrated by the fact that the link was hosed.  (Still is.)  Anyway, after a series of targeted Google searches based on the review’s title, I finally found the actual book title and immediately added it to my list.  Again, the author juxtaposes the cultural devastation of Native Americans with that occurring around the world today.  The core of the book is apparently built around the experience of the Crow tribe, and its "last great chief," Plenty Coups, who, in recounting an oral history of his people and describing the devastation that followed the vanishing of the buffalo, uttered one of the saddest lines I’ve ever read:  "After this nothing happened."

 

And finally, Unquiet Grave:  The FBI and the Struggle for the Soul of Indian Country.  This one is the General’s fault:  Damn you, JC, for shaming me into this.  He received this book for Christmas, and posted a review guaranteed to ensnare me.  Like a lot of folks of native ancestry (whether in part, like myself, or all, like my friend), I’ve always been terribly conflicted about AIM.  Pine Ridge was an abomination; so was the murder of Anna Mae Aquash.  Many of the major AIM players of the time, like Dennis Banks and Clyde Bellcourt, are Shinob, which creates special resonance (and conflict) for me.  And it’s long past time for me to have delved deeply into this passage in our history.  I’m taking Hendricks’s book as my starting point, but I’ll be adding a lot of additional research along the way.

The books are going to be a regular feature of ARA.  As I finish each of these, I’ll post reviews here.  Like I said, add your own reading lists to the comments, and if you want to post a guest review here (not limited to native issues; books about anything) I’d love to have you do it.