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Is there useful info in here? Yeah . . .
Is it from a particularly reliable source? Maybe???
I'm always nervous when I see an introduction that features (and I swear this was his actual nickname) Indian Charlie. You don't often get an endorsement like that from the Vice President of the United States. [Pausing this review to let you all know, in case you didn't, Charles Curtis was the first Native American VP in 1829.] He is, to put it mildly, a contentious figure in Indigenous History. I'm not going to explain here because it really deserves its own book.
What in the name of Charles Alexander Eastman is going on in this book? I know, invoking the ghost of Ohiyesa is maybe strange, but he's the one who started this unusual connection between Indian culture and the scouts. I actually think overall this book is a decent, albeit boring lexicon that does the best it can to capture a moving, visual based language. That said, maybe we don't need to shoehorn the scouts into every one of these books? It came out after the scouting movement boom and dip, so I'm not even sure why they're doing this.
The most useful thing this book have is sweet, sweet sauce. The source work in this book is incredibly helpful not only in understanding the presented "universal language," but also at showing the history of its usage. Yes, that history is cataloged by colonial history, but the author is clearly not taking their side on the presentation of that history. He's delightfully neutral.
Is it from a particularly reliable source? Maybe???
I'm always nervous when I see an introduction that features (and I swear this was his actual nickname) Indian Charlie. You don't often get an endorsement like that from the Vice President of the United States. [Pausing this review to let you all know, in case you didn't, Charles Curtis was the first Native American VP in 1829.] He is, to put it mildly, a contentious figure in Indigenous History. I'm not going to explain here because it really deserves its own book.
What in the name of Charles Alexander Eastman is going on in this book? I know, invoking the ghost of Ohiyesa is maybe strange, but he's the one who started this unusual connection between Indian culture and the scouts. I actually think overall this book is a decent, albeit boring lexicon that does the best it can to capture a moving, visual based language. That said, maybe we don't need to shoehorn the scouts into every one of these books? It came out after the scouting movement boom and dip, so I'm not even sure why they're doing this.
The most useful thing this book have is sweet, sweet sauce. The source work in this book is incredibly helpful not only in understanding the presented "universal language," but also at showing the history of its usage. Yes, that history is cataloged by colonial history, but the author is clearly not taking their side on the presentation of that history. He's delightfully neutral.
