NEITHER WOLF NOR DOG: On Forgotten Roads...

NEITHER WOLF NOR DOG: On Forgotten Roads With an Indian Elder by Kent Nerburn (New World Library: $11.95; 291 pp., paperback original). A curious set of circumstances brought Kent Nerburn to the old Lakota man he identifies only as “Dan.” During a rambling journey through the high plains, Dan dictated his reflections on two centuries of inter-ethnic hostility and the abuse of the land of his ancestors. Deploring the generic images of drunks and sages that prevent many Americans from seeing Indians as individual human beings, Dan declares, “If we looked too long at the past we would be too angry to live. You try to make it up to us by making us into heroes and wise people in all your books and movies. That’s fine for you. But I can still go to a museum and see my grandmother’s skull in a case and hear someone talk about it as an artifact.”