CHAMPIONING NATIVE AMERICAN RIGHTS

'This Indian Country':Historian Hoxie chronicles lesser-known American Indians who championed their people’s rights

Published: Sunday, October 28, 2012, 2:33 PM Updated: Sunday, October 28, 2012, 2:56 PM

By Debbi Snook, The Plain Dealer

"Who has stood up for the American Indian? 

Frederick E. Hoxie likes to ask this of his University of Illinois students on the Urbana/Champaign campus. He hears Geronimo, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. And, since the 1995 Disney film, Pocahontas. 

We are stalled on romantic stereotypes of Native Americans, Hoxie writes in his groundbreaking academic book, "This Indian Country: American Indian Activists and the Place They Made." We like our Indians to be warriors and princesses, easy to dismiss as having a history that was short, sad and long ago. 

Intending no disrespect to war heroes such as Ohio's Tecumseh, Hoxie wonders, "Why don't we demand a richer, three-dimensional story?" 

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The Plain Dealer