‘You probably shouldn’t tell anyone about being Indian; people can’t tell by looking at you.’
An excerpt from An Indian Among los Indígenas By Ursula Pike Photo by Stephanie Macias Gibson Read a review of Ursula Pike’s memoir here. Bolivians told me all the time that they were proud of their Incan ancestors, and the kids often bragged that Kantuta meant Sacred Flower of the Incas in Quechua. Yet they knew what many people, especially the wealthier, whiter population of Bolivia, thought about los Indios. Few wanted to be seen as an Indian. For a young woman like Ximenita, living in a town for the first time in her life without family nearby, being seen as a cholita made...
Personal Discovery and Historical Clashes
An Indian Among los Indígenas A Native Travel Memoir By Ursula Pike Heyday Review by Rich Wandschneider There are many important aspects to this book. Here are three: Ursula Pike is a fine writer, with an eye for people and places in Bolivia, and an ear for the sounds of languages, buses, and silence; she is deeply reflective about the critical tensions of the cross-cultural experience and the mission to serve; and Pike is Indigenous herself, an enrolled member of the Karuk Tribe of Northern California who grew up an “urban Indian,” largely in Portland, Oregon. This last fact...