In this innovative history, Paige Raibmon examines the political ramifications of ideas about real Indians. Focusing on the Northwest Coast in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, she describes how government officials, missionaries, anthropologists, reformers, settlers, and tourists developed definitions of Indian authenticity based on such binaries as Indian versus White, traditional versus modern, and uncivilized versus civilized. They recognized as authentic only those expressions of Indianness that conformed to their limited definitions and reflected their sense of colonial...

In this innovative history, Paige Raibmon examines the political ramifications of ideas about real Indians. Focusing on the Northwest Coast in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, she describes how government officials, missionaries, anthropologists, reformers, settlers, and tourists developed definitions of Indian authenticity based on such binaries as Indian versus White, traditional versus modern, and uncivilized versus civilized. They recognized as authentic only those expressions of Indianness that conformed to their limited definitions and reflected their sense of colonial...