I am sorry to hear that Sidner Larson took such offense at one small part of ”American Indian Literary Nationalism,” the book I co-authored with Jace Weaver and Craig Womack, that he felt compelled to devote an entire column to trumping up a case against our work [”Don’t Call Me ‘Junior,’ Junior,” Vol. 27, Iss. 23]. I have admired Sid’s work and he and I have shared a cordial relationship for well over a decade, which perhaps explains why he lets me and my chapter off the hook in his column. Regardless, I find what he has written to be in need of a response.

Larson reveals himself in the column as the unnamed person behind a brief anecdote Weaver shares in his chapter of our book about someone who treated Weaver as a relative newcomer, when, as Weaver points out, he had been publishing in the field since before Larson completed his doctorate. Weaver is factually correct here, but Larson makes a fair point in saying that someone’s contributions to a field might predate their completion of a degree. He makes an unfortunate case for his own seniority, though, in claiming that a law degree he earned in 1986 predates Weaver’s doctorate given the fact that Weaver also has a law degree of his own to go along with the doctorate, and earned it at Columbia Law School several years before Larson got his.

I will leave these two erstwhile lawyers to sort out such discrepancies, but I do want to point out how frustrating it is to have Indian Country Today publishing Larson’s cascade of unsubstantiated claims about our book. Larson variously complains that our book ”deteriorates into peevishness or retaliation,” ”contains too much nationalist rhetoric,” is ineffective and repetitious because it was co-authored, ”returns again and again to the old authenticity debate,” does not exercise ”the power of choice” and has no application to the lives of reservation Indians. In the midst of this supposedly damning critique, Larson includes only one tangential example, not a single sentence describing the scope or aim of the book, not a single quotation other than the one from the anecdote he uses to reveal himself as Weaver’s foil, and the smug-sounding invocation of an unnamed set of ”truly senior American Indian scholars” whom he claims agree with his assessment. He identifies one error we make in citing a book title as proof that the book has ”inaccuracies,” though this is the only one he offers. I would be happy to defend myself and my co-authors against these charges, but Larson provides next to no evidence to rebut. This, to me, is in the worst tradition of book reviewing – a reviewer telling an author (or co-authors) to write a different book than the one the author has.

If you would insist on substantial critiques of published ideas, I would be pleased to respond in kind. The Native world would benefit not only from hearing more about books that seek to bring scholarly acumen to issues that arise within our communities; your pages could be a forum for vigorous discussion of ideas rather than being opportunities for self-indulgent rants.

– Robert Warrior

Edith Kinney Gaylord

Presidential Professor

University of Oklahoma

Norman, Okla.