From Library Journal
Historian Parker has written a well-documented account of the life of D'Arcy McNickle (1904-77), an enrolled member of the Montana Flathead tribe, an anthropologist, teacher, novelist ( Runner in the Sun , 1954; Univ. of New Mexico Pr, 1987. reprint); The Surrounded , 1936; Univ. of New Mexico, 1978. reprint); Wind from an Enemy Sky , 1978; Univ. of New Mexico, 1988. reprint), and founding member of the National Congress of American Indians. The biography, depicting a life in two cultures, begins with a family history and look at reservation life. Next emerges McNickle's career from the 1920s to the 1970s. Sections on his association with the "Indian New Deal" and the Bureau of Indian Affairs under John Collier are especially interesting. McNickle set precedents in whatever he touched: as an early Pan-Indianist and, in 1971, when he became the first director of the Newberry Library's Center for the History of the American Indian. His literary works, once ignored, are now considered seminal Native American novels. This is an account of a unique American whose contributions were many and varied. Recommended for Native American collections.
- Margaret W. Norton, Hoffman Estates H.S., Hoffman Estates, Ill.Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Product Description
'The subject of this sympathetic and sensitive biography was a notable American Indian whose life touched many of the issues of Indian-white relations in the United States' - Francis Paul Prucha, "Pacific Northwest Quarterly". 'Parker's biography is a careful study of the public life of a very private man...Her biography challenges simple notions of ethnic identity and provides readers with the groundwork to develop their own insights into the transactions and negotiations of identity formulation' - "Choice". McNickle (1904-1977) is best known today for the American Indian history center that carries his name at the Newberry Library in Chicago, and for his novels, "The Surrounded", "Runner in the Sun", and "Wind from an Enemy Sky". A historian and novelist, he was also an anthropologist, Bureau of Indian Affairs official during the heady days of the Indian New Deal, teacher, and founding member of the National Congress of American Indians.The child of a Metis mother and white father, he was an enrolled member of the Flathead Tribe of Montana. But first, and largely by choice, he was a Native American who sought to restore pride and self-determination to all Native American people. Based on a wide range of previously untapped sources, this first full-length biography traces the course of McNickle's life from the reservation of his childhood through a career of major import to American Indian political and cultural affairs. In so doing it reveals a man who affirmed his own heritage while giving a collective Indian voice to many who had previously seen themselves only in a tribal context. Dorothy R. Parker is an assistant professor of history at Eastern New Mexico University. Her publications include "Phoenix Indian School: The Second Half-Century" and articles and reviews in the "American Indian Culture and Research Journal" and elsewhere.
