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A review by snowbenton
Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians but Were Afraid to Ask by Anton Treuer
This was a 2 star read for me, but I am not putting a rating in as I don't want to discourage anyone from it as I do think it's a good resource.
My biggest issue with this is that I can't figure out what the target audience is. I read the young readers version, but it's much too dry for me to imagine a young person enjoying it, and it's too simplistic for adults. The entire thing reads like an info sheet that you'd have at some corporate sensitivity training. I don't think any part of it is bad, it's just so boring.
I also struggled with the constant use of "Indians." I live in Arizona and I know many native people use that term, and it's absolutely not my place to have any opinion on that. However, as a book geared toward non-native people, I was a little uncomfortable that Treuer primarily used "Indians" instead of any other alternative. He even says in the text that it is offensive, and I would never use that term as a white person, so I think I would have preferred to see a term that is acceptable for everyone to use. But that's just my two cents and can be safely ignored.
My biggest issue with this is that I can't figure out what the target audience is. I read the young readers version, but it's much too dry for me to imagine a young person enjoying it, and it's too simplistic for adults. The entire thing reads like an info sheet that you'd have at some corporate sensitivity training. I don't think any part of it is bad, it's just so boring.
I also struggled with the constant use of "Indians." I live in Arizona and I know many native people use that term, and it's absolutely not my place to have any opinion on that. However, as a book geared toward non-native people, I was a little uncomfortable that Treuer primarily used "Indians" instead of any other alternative. He even says in the text that it is offensive, and I would never use that term as a white person, so I think I would have preferred to see a term that is acceptable for everyone to use. But that's just my two cents and can be safely ignored.