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A review by highlowbuffalo
An Indian Among Los Indígenas: A Native Travel Memoir by Ursula Pike
3.0
“Education and economic empowerment were available to Lena [an Indigenous girl] but the only way to achieve them was to leave behind her culture… having to choose between development or culture was a choice someone outside the culture had thought up. A choice that someone who didn’t have to leave her culture to thrive would present. Stick ‘em up- your culture or your future.”
The concept of An Indian Among Los Indigenas is fantastic- what it’s like to be an Indigenous person who volunteers to help out another group of Indigenous peoples. I highlighted passage after passage. This book made me think hard about what it means to be Indigenous. It made me dig deep into the intentions behind helping others. I have come to the conclusion that there’s a great difference between saving and supporting.
“The real beneficiaries of service work were the service workers themselves”
Though the idea behind the memoir is compelling and the story is enjoyable, I wasn’t satisfied by it as a whole. I found it hard to respect the thoughts and actions of the narrator. She seems very self-absorbed and self-righteous. (Though it also seems that she intended to only show this side of herself, maybe to align with the purpose of the book.) But I appreciate multi-faceted characters. I wish we could’ve seen more into her honest thoughts and feelings and what was going on in her life. Also, without giving any spoilers, I’ll say there were many seemingly significant events that were either glazed over or alluded to later. It’s as if she experienced a whole different journey than the one she took us on. This is also due to a lack of narrated thoughts and feelings. Overall, the story just didn’t seem fully developed. Or rather, the objective of telling this story overshadowed the actual story itself.
The concept of An Indian Among Los Indigenas is fantastic- what it’s like to be an Indigenous person who volunteers to help out another group of Indigenous peoples. I highlighted passage after passage. This book made me think hard about what it means to be Indigenous. It made me dig deep into the intentions behind helping others. I have come to the conclusion that there’s a great difference between saving and supporting.
“The real beneficiaries of service work were the service workers themselves”
Though the idea behind the memoir is compelling and the story is enjoyable, I wasn’t satisfied by it as a whole. I found it hard to respect the thoughts and actions of the narrator. She seems very self-absorbed and self-righteous. (Though it also seems that she intended to only show this side of herself, maybe to align with the purpose of the book.) But I appreciate multi-faceted characters. I wish we could’ve seen more into her honest thoughts and feelings and what was going on in her life. Also, without giving any spoilers, I’ll say there were many seemingly significant events that were either glazed over or alluded to later. It’s as if she experienced a whole different journey than the one she took us on. This is also due to a lack of narrated thoughts and feelings. Overall, the story just didn’t seem fully developed. Or rather, the objective of telling this story overshadowed the actual story itself.