Summary Of The Inconvenient Indian By Thomas King

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In the chapter ‘Forget Columbus’ of the book ‘The Inconvenient Indian’, the author Thomas King writes about his point of view on the forgotten history of the Native Americans. He conveys about the tales made up about the natives and americans engraved in the history to mainly appeal to the white audience. The author starts the chapter by telling how insignificant was the discovery of the land of natives made by Columbus. According to him the only reason why he was given credit and recognized because his story as Columbus sailing the oceans, travelling across with interesting adventures and going through hardships with a letter to the Emperor of Indies by the King and Queen of Spain captured the imagination of the audience and met the expectations …show more content…
He goes thoroughly through all the wars and events that have occurred between the Americans and Natives and sympathizes for the lost history of the natives. He confirms with his explanation of the short short stories and historical facts that the whites have been too harsh on the natives for their personal interests. He tries rectifying the reason behind the history of the natives and the americans and concludes that ‘racism’ isn’t the reason behind the war. He wishes that details of the history were appropriately recorded. Instead of showing how the Natives were an hindrance to the European migration to their lands he wished that the Natives and Europeans were portrayed in an amicable manner where the records would have applauded the efforts made by the Natives to give assistance to the Europeans by showing them the river routes, trade routes, showing them around the neighborhood and introducing them to their people. He wished that history focused more on the aid that the Indians gave to the Europeans than the trouble they had caused. It determines he did not want these massacres to happen and wanted the history to promote peace rather than …show more content…
He has an optimistic view towards how the history could have been portrayed . Though I respect his optimism, I don’t think that history could have been portrayed the way how he wanted even though I support his point. There are good events which have been noticed even during the time of war which have appealed for peace. It all depends on what the audience wants to choose to notice. His sense of observation is commendable as he justifies and explains every statement he asserts with an example and uses logic to persuade his audience to understand his angle of vision. He has given rhetorics and tension to some major subtopics with which today’s society can relate to; for example when he displays his sense of morality when he raises question on how the native women were portrayed as sexual objects and how homosexuality wasn’t recognized like the true history of the Native Americans as they were more appealing to the audience than dealing with barbaric Native men. This gives us a lot of idea on what kind of society was there during that time and how the ideologies of their society was compared to ours. He gives credibility to the facts he gives to the people to gain their confidence on the subject he is talking about.

His conclusion justifies with the statement, “ Native history is somewhat akin to a fossil hunt” by telling how we would find parts of history from different locations forming a series of events that have occurred

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