Includes index

In this book, the author offers a deeply knowing, darkly funny, unabashedly opinionated, and utterly unconventional account of Indian-White relations in North America since initial contact. In the process, he refashions old stories about historical events and figures. Ranging freely across the centuries and the Canada-U.S. border, he debunks fabricated stories of Indian savagery and White heroism, takes an oblique look at Indians (and cowboys) in film and popular culture, wrestles with the history of Native American resistance and his own experiences as a Native rights activist, and articulates a profound, revolutionary understanding of the cumulative effects of ever-shifting laws and treaties on Native peoples and lands. At once a "history" and the complete subversion of a history, this is a critical and personal meditation that the author has conducted over the past 50 years about what it means to be "Indian" in North America. This book distills the insights gleaned from that meditation, weaving the curiously circular tale of the relationship between non-Natives and Natives in the centuries since the two first encountered each other

Prologue: Warm toast and porcupines -- Forget Columbus -- End of the trail -- Too heavy to lift -- One name to rule them all -- We are sorry -- Like cowboys and Indians -- Forget about it -- What Indians want -- As long as the grass is green -- Happy ever after