The Indian To-Day: The Past and Future of the First American

Charles A. Eastman (Ohiyesa), a Santee Dakota physician educated at Boston University, wrote this urgent account in the early twentieth century as his people faced annihilation. Part memoir, part cultural manifesto, The Indian To-Day demolishes the myth of the "vanishing race" while honestly confronting the crises of adaptation and identity that assimilation policies inflicted. Eastman draws on his own journey from traditional Dakota childhood to Western professional to argue that his people possess democratic ideals, spiritual wisdom, and adaptive capacity that America desperately needs. He writes with painful clarity about intertribal warfare, the corrosive effects of materialism, and the theft of land and freedom, yet refuses to let readers pity his people. Instead, he demands recognition: the Indian is not America's past, but part of its future. This book remains essential reading for anyone seeking to understand Native American perspectives on a century of broken promises and enduring survival.