Description: Explores the drive of whites to "individualize" Indians -- showing them how they should pursue happiness, find the meaning of life and how they should labor.
Review Quotes: "Joel Pfister's book shows how Indians served as subjects for quite specific American ideological projects, in this case, projects involving different conceptions of the 'individual.' Pfister's extensive archival research makes a significant contribution to our understanding of Richard Henry Pratt and the Carlisle Indian School and of John Collier and the Indian New Deal. He pays careful attention to such earlier Native writers and activists as Gertrude and Raymond Bonnin, Luther Standing Bear, and D'Arcy McNickle as well to contemporary Native writers like Leslie Marmon Silko, Jimmie Durham, and Sherman Alexie, among several others. This is a wide-ranging and important book."--Arnold Krupat, Sarah Lawrence College