Review of The Arapaho

Among my treasured possessions is a photograph of three small children dressed in Indian regalia. The little boy and girl pictured wear fringed embroidered tunics and feathered headdresses; the baby-my father-sports a jaunty beaded headband with one feather. Taken in 1923, it captured their perception of Native American life: beads, bows and arrows, and buckskin. More than sixty years later, many children have a similar image of Indian culture. Native American historical revisionism may now be accepted in higher education but one look at primary school depictions of Thanksgiving suggests how little of the new scholarship has filtered down