The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America

Content Warning: Both the source material and this guide contain extensive discussion of racism against Indigenous peoples of North America, including the genocide of Indigenous peoples and forced assimilation.

Thomas King is a writer of Cherokee descent. Originally from the United States, King now lives in Canada, where he has served as an English professor at various universities since the 1980s. King is primarily known for his fiction writing and has penned numerous novels and stories that typically focus on Indigenous characters and history. His 1993 novel Green Grass, Running Water was one of the finalists for Canada’s Governor General’s Award for fiction. The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America is King’s first book of nonfiction, and it discusses the history of Indigenous-white relations since European colonization.

King’s writing in The Inconvenient Indian is characterized by a highly personal and conversational style, which frequently intersperses anecdotes about King’s life with his discussions of Indigenous history. In the Prologue, King explains his unique approach to historical writing: “As a result, although The Inconvenient Indian is fraught with history, the underlying narrative is a series of conversations and arguments that I’ve been having with myself and others for most of my adult life” (xii).