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BOOK REVIEW          DENT

  It is a pity that this book is not better, for there is much need just now for substantive history in the area of Indian movements.  Indians are no longer as isolated as they once were due to their urbanization and the expansion of industry into the midlands.  They are no longer hindered by the lack of communication, given this era of instant replay on the six o'clock news.  An Indian leaving the reservation today for a job in the city is only a few hours from home by jet.  All of these conditions give the Indian a much more feasible chance to create the kind of unity which will permit him to struggle more effectively with that state which has historically oppressed him since the white Euro-peans first set foot on his continent.  Clear and accurate histories of the cause of this oppression will be needed or the Indian will be left to shadow box with myths and straw dogs.  Hertzberg has not provided much assistance in this area.  There is no real accountability herein as to what has happened to the Indian.  The grafters and corrupt politicians are blamed but this is always an answer and it doesn't take you anywhere.  This kind of generalization is the begin-ning of a question, not the resolution of an answer.  Who are the politicians seeking to serve with their corruption?  Indeed who is paying for this corruption?  How long has it been going on and what do we do about it?  If we can resolve an honest answer to these questions I suspect we shall be solving more than just Indian prob-lems.  If those who call themselves scholars would extend their fact collecting to provide answers to these questions, then perhaps some real light would shine down on America and we could begin to climb out of that darkness which has oppressed so many for so long.

Steve Hitchcock





YOU CAN SEE IT, YOU CAN FEEL IT

DE MAYOR OF HARLEM.  By David Henderson.  E. P. Dutton, New York.  127 pages.  $4.95.

DAVID HENDERSON'S poems (De Mayor of Harlem) represent a major contribution to the literature of black people that has gone largely ignored by the black and progressive press.  Henderson now resides in Berkeley but grew up as a precocious teenage poet

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