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To Be Indian
The Life of Iroquois-Seneca Arthur Caswell Parker
by Joy Porter
Foreword by William N. Fenton
Preface by Odie Brant Porter
Published by: University of Oklahoma Press
Imprint: University of Oklahoma Press
Born on the Seneca Indian Reservation in New York State, Arthur Caswell Parker (1881-1955) was a prominent intellectual leader both within and outside tribal circles. Of mixed Iroquois, Seneca, and Anglican descent, Parker was also a controversial figure-recognized as an advocate for Native Americans but criticized for his assimilationist stance. In this exhaustively researched biography-the first book-length examination of Parker’s life and career-Joy Porter explores complex issues of Indian identity that are as relevant today as in Parker’s time.
From childhood on, Parker learned from his well-connected family how to straddle both Indian and white worlds. His great-uncle, Ely S. Parker, was Commissioner of Indian Affairs under Ulysses S. Grant--the first Native American to hold the position. Influenced by family role models and a strong formal education, Parker, who became director of the Rochester Museum, was best known for his work as a "museologist" (a word he coined).
Porter shows that although Parker achieved success within the dominant Euro-American culture, he was never entirely at ease with his role as assimilated Indian and voiced frustration at having "to play Indian to be Indian." In expressing this frustration, Parker articulated a challenging predicament for twentieth-century Indians: the need to negotiate imposed stereotypes, to find ways to transcend those stereotypes, and to assert an identity rooted in the present rather than in the past.
From childhood on, Parker learned from his well-connected family how to straddle both Indian and white worlds. His great-uncle, Ely S. Parker, was Commissioner of Indian Affairs under Ulysses S. Grant--the first Native American to hold the position. Influenced by family role models and a strong formal education, Parker, who became director of the Rochester Museum, was best known for his work as a "museologist" (a word he coined).
Porter shows that although Parker achieved success within the dominant Euro-American culture, he was never entirely at ease with his role as assimilated Indian and voiced frustration at having "to play Indian to be Indian." In expressing this frustration, Parker articulated a challenging predicament for twentieth-century Indians: the need to negotiate imposed stereotypes, to find ways to transcend those stereotypes, and to assert an identity rooted in the present rather than in the past.
Joy Porter is Principal Investigator of the Treatied Spaces Research Group (treatiedspaces.com) and Professor of Indigenous and Environmental History at the University of Hull, United Kingdom.
William N. Fenton (1908–2005) was Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at New York State University and the author of The Great Law and the Longhouse and The False Faces of the Iroquois.
Odie Brant Porter (Seneca Nation) has served as the Seneca Nation’s fiscal controller and as budget director of the University of Kansas. She represents Allegany Territory on the Seneca Nation Council.
“Throughout Porter’s biography, the larger theme of Parker’s life stands out: his struggle to shape an authentic and successful Indian identity despite obstacles within and without. Porter’s gracefully written study adds to a growing literature on both twentieth-century American Indian history and Indian identity and its biographical format makes it particularly engaging reading. – The Journal of American History
“Students of cultural mediation, race relations, and intellectual history, particularly as these relate to American Indian history, will want to read this book.” —Ethnohistory
“An important contribution to American Indian history, to cross-cultural studies and to the history of education.”—American Studies in Scandinavia
“As a biography of Arthur Parker’s life, To Be Indian offers a storehouse of information”—Studies in American Indian Literatures
“This biography gives us in-depth information on Parker”—Journal of American Ethnic History
“A cogent, well crafted, and balanced portrait. . . . A solid work of scholarship, written in a lively and engaging fashion.”—New York History
“This elegant account of a heretofore-unhearlded Native anthropologist is a great contribution to the history of American anthropology.”—CHOICE
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