Paul Chaat Smith – författare

Forceful and eloquent essays on the American Indian in culture and history – now in paperbackIn this sweeping work of memoir and commentary, leading cultural critic Paul Chaat Smith illustrates with dry wit and brutal honesty the contradictions of life in "the Indian business."Raised in suburban Maryland and Oklahoma, Smith dove head first into the political radicalism of the 1970s, working with the American Indian Movement until it dissolved into dysfunction and infighting. Afterward he lived in New York, the city of choice for political exiles, and eventually arrived in Washington, D.C., at the newly minted National Museum of the American Indian ("a bad idea whose time has come") as a curator. In his journey from fighting activist to federal employee, Smith tells us he has discovered at least two things: there is no one true representation of the American Indian experience, and even the best intentions sometimes result in catastrophe.Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong is a highly entertaining and, at times, searing critique of the deeply disputed role of American Indians in the United States. In "A Place Called Irony," Smith whizzes through his early life, showing us the ironic pop culture signposts that marked this Native American's coming of age in suburbia: "We would order Chinese food and slap a favorite video into the machine – the Grammy Awards or a Reagan press conference – and argue about Cyndi Lauper or who should coach the Knicks." In "Lost in Translation," Smith explores why American Indians are so often misunderstood and misrepresented in today's media: "We're lousy television." In "Every Picture Tells a Story," Smith remembers his Comanche grandfather as he muses on the images of American Indians as "a half-remembered presence, both comforting and dangerous, lurking just below the surface."Smith walks this tightrope between comforting and dangerous, offering unrepentant skepticism and, ultimately, empathy. "This book is called Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong, but it's a book title, folks, not to be taken literally. Of course I don't mean everything, just most things. And 'you' really means we, as in all of us."

An acerbic, candid reckoning with Indigenous identity, visibility, and the messy realities of cultural changeIn Indian Enough, curator and critic Paul Chaat Smith probes the paradox of contemporary Indigeneity: enormous, hard-won cultural visibility in museum exhibits, land acknowledgments, mascot removals, and more alongside persistent erasure in everyday life. Rejecting the easy comforts of identity politics (he was, he admits, a fan of the Land O'Lakes Butter Maiden), Smith brings "honest confusion" to his inquiry, using sharp wit and wry humor to confront the gap between symbolism and lived reality.Both memoir and cultural critique, Indian Enough follows Smith from a suburban childhood in Washington, D.C., filled with Kurt Vonnegut and Vine Deloria Jr., through teenage years steeped in Native politics leading to a thrilling and eventually disillusioning stint with the American Indian Movement, to his pivotal role in creating the inaugural exhibitions at the National Museum of the American Indian. His insider account of NMAI exposes how well-meaning efforts to redress Native erasure can simply swap one set of stereotypes for another, and his candor shows how institutions and activists—himself included—all grapple with the tension between good intentions and political realities.Irreverent and searching, Indian Enough tackles culture writ large—the rise of punk and the fall of AIM, pop culture as a battleground, Indigenous slaveowners and other histories we'd rather forget, MAGA Indians, and what it means to win when the ground keeps shifting—to reveal a truth that's hard to reconcile in an era of "progress": representation is everywhere, certainty is not.Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.