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Blog: Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Filed Under: Arts & Entertainment

"On one of the first springtime Saturdays in April, I managed to slip down to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian to catch its associate curator, Paul Chaat Smith, read from his latest book Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong. Not exactly an event to herald the death of a wet, extended winter, but the book title and press release had my attention. I wanted to know more about the book - and the man behind it. Spring, for the moment, could wait.

I wasn’t disappointed.

To understand the author is to understand the book that much more. It’s less a cohesive treatise on any particular point - and if you’re looking for a “top ten” list based on the title, you’ll be sorely disappointed. As Paul stated, “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.”

Much of Paul’s journey in writing the essays within the book coalesced during the political radicalism of the 1970’s - he joined the American Indian Movement right after the national spotlight focused on the group during their Siege of Wounded Knee in 1973. While the Siege ended up being the group’s pinnacle, Paul stuck with AIM through its decline and breakdown in later years from dysfunction and infighting. He moved to New York, “the city of choice for political exiles,” and then eventually to DC, working as a temp and writing on the side about art and politics. And whenever an Indian museum asked him to write, he always accepted."

Get the Story:
Scribblings: Paul Chaat Smith (We Love DC 4/28)

Another Story:
Smith tries to undo American Indian stereotypes (The Ohio State University Lantern 4/29)