In his thoroughly engaging book titled Radical Hope, Jonathan Lear pinpoints a crucial question: how would we respond to the complete and devastating annihilation of our culture? By positioning the reader in the Crow cultural context, Lear identifies how many essential ways of Native-American lifestyles were crushed into oblivion. When the planting of the coup stick during battle and buffalo hunting was eradicated, for instance, the Crows’ lifestyle and very sense of identity was rendered meaningless. Lear is quick to establish the philosophical content of his book. In other words, the reader is not told about the ways in which a Native-American way of life was pushed aside from a historical perspective. On the contrary, Lear launches into an ontological investigation into how identity and tradition tie into larger questions. How does one confront complete cultural annihilation and how does one overcome it? What qualifies as cultural genocide? How can the Crow experience be perceived in a positive light that may bring the reader some sense of radical hope?
Throughout the course of my reading, I was struck by how easily Lear apologized for liberally employing the terms “white man” and “Indian” in his book, yet Lear does not even seem to hesitate when he labels the Crow women as “squaw”. Is Lear more concerned about racial profiling than about gender discrimination? What are his thoughts on stereotyping women? Lear also seems to pinpoint the basis of Crow lifestyle on buffalo hunting, yet does not seem to acknowledge that other significant Crow organizations managed to revive their sense of self-identity thanks to other means like the sweat lodge. Finally, I was struck by how liberally Lear uses the terms “culture” and “tradition” in an interchangeable fashion. A more thorough definition of these rich, connotative terms would have rendered my reading a little easier, given that Lear seems to imply that the reader articulates Lear’s understandings of culture and tradition, when there is actually no basis for making such an assumption.
