Description
Book SynopsisTraces the 77-year history of a youth development program that, at its height, engaged over a half million participants annually. Beginning with idealistic origins, intending to soften the stereotypical stern father, Y-Indian Guides traced a complicated thread of American history, touching upon themes of family, race, class, and privilege.
Trade ReviewThe narrative attends to an important chapter in our (western) histories of masculinity, colonialism, fatherhood/boyhood, and Indigeneity."—Jason Edward Black, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, coauthor of
Mascot Nation: The Controversy over Native American Representations in Sports "Hillmer and Bean’s sophisticated historical analysis of YMCA Indian Guides wrestles with the central problematic of progressive multiculturalism in a settler colonial nation: the desire to champion and recreate Indigenous culture while evading both the lived reality of Indigenous people as well as a formal reckoning with the white history of genocidal violence.
Inappropriation: The Contested Legacy of Y-Indian Guides illustrates how white people symbolically and materially colonized Indigenous people and traditions to strengthen white familial bonds at the cost of American Indian history and dignity. The book brings new and important insights on the use of Indigenous caricature and cultural appropriation in the white colonial imaginary."—Casey Ryan Kelly, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, author of
Apocalypse Man: The Death Drive and the Rhetoric of White Masculine Victimhood "Cultural appropriation has been an ever-present characteristic of settler colonialism in North America. In their examination of the Y-Indian Guides program, Paul Hillmer and Ryan Bean demonstrate how the program, over its 77 years of existence, appropriated Indigenous experiences and imagery in the service of strengthening family, building community, and, much more problematically, honoring Indigenous peoples and cultures. This book joins a growing and important literature examining how North American institutions have affected and been affected by settler colonialism."—Jon Weier, George Brown College, coeditor of ActiveHistory.ca
