Native Americans

"Chief Bender's Burden"
A biography tells of how the Native American pitcher overcame long odds and fierce prejudice to star for Connie Mack's Athletics.
Is everything we know about American history wrong?
Forget the Pilgrims. America's roots are older and more twisted, what Tony Horwitz calls a "primordial slime of false starts and mutations."
King Kaufman's Sports Daily
The Cleveland Indians minstrel show: Fans painted to resemble the outrageously racist mascot are shown without comment in the mainstream media. Enough.
King Kaufman's Sports Daily
Indian mascot to shuffle off this mortal coil. Plus: Britney Spears mulls hockey offer.
"Welcome to Red Lake"
A muckraking Chippewa journalist says tribal press constraints keep details of the recent school shooting murky -- and hide systemic problems on the reservation where he grew up.
Bones of contention
The ongoing debate over where the first Americans came from has anthropologists battling with Native Americans, white supremacists and the Army Corps of Engineers.
Wilma Mankiller
The first female chief of the Cherokee Nation, she took tragedy and illness and made strength. And don't even ask where she got her name.
Mixing it up
The author of "One Drop of Blood: The American Misadventure of Race" picks five books in which racial lines go blurry.
"The Blood Runs Like a River Through My Dreams" by Nasdijj
A not-quite-Native American's hard, strange life makes for a fiercely original memoir about the compulsion to write.
Letters to the editor
Does the debunker need debunking? Plus: Up with the Sponge! "Mission to Mars" doesn't get off the ground.
Skull wars
Native American activists battle scientists for bones that may prove they had white ancestors.
Sherman Alexie's cultural imperialism
The Native American novelist thinks Ian Frazier had no business writing "On the Rez." He may have some trespasses of his own to answer for.
"On the Rez" by Ian Frazier
In an instant American classic, a great writer zeros in on the Oglala Sioux (as much as he can zero in on anything).
Artist's little helper
Fred Tomaselli's work offers the experience of taking drugs in the safest possible way -- through the eyes.
A kinder, gentler cowboy
Ric Lynden Hardman revives the cowboy genre with "Sunshine Rider: The First Vegetarian Western" -- a picaresque, cocky, playful coming-of-age novel.
Remembering Michael Dorris
Friends and colleagues celebrate the writer's life -- and take issue, sometimes angrily, with those who have raised dark questions about it.

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