500 NationsDiscussion Questions

• For many, according to the author, Wounded Knee represents the end of the Native American narrative, how does the author refute this claim? Give examples.

• According to the author, how is “Wounded Knee” a typical encounter between Indians and Whites?

• What are three stereotypes the author gives for Indians?• What is the gist of the White account of the settling of

America by Indians?• What are some commonalities amongst the various

Native American Creation myths? How do the creation myths show the union between Native Americans and nature/the land?

500 Nations

• “I have tried to remember that the first Americans had a way of life and a way of death, that their story is long and continuing, and that it is only the White convenience that categorizes them as “Indians.” To themselves, they were and are 500 different nations, composed of millions of individuals.

500 Nations

• “Distinct by way of life, by physicality, by language, the post-Clovis aboriginals became a kaleidoscope of 500 nations. Although the whites liked to talk of “the Indian” when they gate-crashed America in 1492, the original inhabitants had long been Native Peoples who, outside the commonality of their spiritual binding to the Earth, could be as different to each other as the French European was to the English European”