The American Indian and the Problem of History

Anthropologists, historians, and Native and non-Native Americans question whether formal Western history has the philosophical power and imagination to enable scholars to write about Indian societies who performed in the Western vision of history only through coercion.

It questions whether formal Western history has the philosophical power and imagination to enable scholars to write about life and world societies who were conceived in history, who did not willingly launch themselves out onto an historical trajectory, and who performed in the Western vision and errand of history only through coercion. Here, then, is a study of the "metaphysics" of writing Indian-white history.