Who Gets to Be Indian—And Who Decides?

In 1928, Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance published a memoir that caused a sensation in the literary world. It opened with his earliest memory: Barely a year old, he was riding in a moss baby carrier on his mother’s back, surrounded by women and horses. His mother’s hand was bleeding, and she was crying. Long Lance wrote that when he’d recounted this memory to his aunt years later, he’d been told that he was remembering the “exciting aftermath of an Indian fight” in which his uncle Iron Blanket...