Review by Choice Review
Kent Nerburn's book is a well-meaning exploration of Native American life by a white author who has directed an oral history project for the Red Lake Ojibwe Reservation in Minnesota. It is a hard book to classify. It purports to be the account of travels and conversations with Dan, an Indian elder; its intention is to provide an authentic, unsentimental look at Indian life. Nerburn's skills as a narrator and stylist are not outstanding, and his endless mea culpas about being a white outsider become tiresome very quickly. One particular difficulty is his failure to convince the reader that the interlocutor, Dan, is really a remarkable person. An acerbic Native American friend of Dan's, Grover, adds some dialectical bite to the book, and a dog named Fatback is an interesting recurrent figure, doubtless with a symbolic role. This book will get some attention because of its native theme, but it lacks the insight and literary merit of works by native Americans such as N. Scott Momaday, whose memoir, The Names (CH, May'77), will move and instruct the reader more than this book. Nerburn is undone by his good intentions. B. Almon; University of Alberta
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Readers looking for another red-man-departs-wise-words-to-white-man-to-lessen-white- man's-guilt will be disappointed by the tone and content of this work. Realists wanting a truthful, fiery, and, ultimately, cleansing dialogue between Indian and white will definitely want it. Nerburn reluctantly agrees to a meeting with Dan, a Lakota elder who asks him to construct a book from a motley collection of notes, diatribes, and political and social commentaries written over seven decades and kept in an old shoe box. Void of the hypocrisy rampant in many books that have whites adopting the ways of "the great spirit," Nerburn exposes the real truth, which whites are unwilling to face: that in "the hunger to own a piece of the earth, we had destroyed the dreams and families of an entire race." Joined by a dog named Fatback, Dan gives Nerburn the ride of his life as they cross the vast Midwest in Dan's Buick. Along the way, Dan alternates between rage and melancholy, and Nerburn between shame and confusion. Nerburn unintentionally touches nerve after nerve and elicits an almost unbearable flood of anguish and despair. The truth revealed in this book will be difficult for most whites to face, but it is painfully necessary if healing is ever to begin. ~--Kevin Roddy
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
Non-Indian theologian and editor Nerburn attempts to "bridge the gap between the world into which I had been born and the world of a people I had grown to know and love" by narrating the fascinating toils and truths of Dan, a 78-year-old Lakota man. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
