Book completed
Jul. 14th, 2021 01:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eve_prime"All the Real Indians Died Off" and 20 Other Myths About Native Americans, by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker. This is a worthwhile book, although I'd preferentially recommend Dunbar-Ortiz's history book for anyone willing to read it. The authors debunk a great many common beliefs about Native Americans, both historical and current, ranging from "Europeans brought civilization to the backwards Indians" to "Indian casinos made them all rich."
At one point, though, I had to set the book aside for a few days, as I was too annoyed with the basic innumeracy implied by their statement that the suicide rate among Native youth is 18%, which defies common sense. The suicide rate among Native young people is much higher than for white people, and definitely needs to be addressed, but the rate they were citing is actually 18 per 100,000, not 18%, so they were off by a factor of a thousand. I hope it was just a typo, but with two authors you'd have hoped one of them would catch it.
At one point, though, I had to set the book aside for a few days, as I was too annoyed with the basic innumeracy implied by their statement that the suicide rate among Native youth is 18%, which defies common sense. The suicide rate among Native young people is much higher than for white people, and definitely needs to be addressed, but the rate they were citing is actually 18 per 100,000, not 18%, so they were off by a factor of a thousand. I hope it was just a typo, but with two authors you'd have hoped one of them would catch it.