Embracing Fry Bread: Confessions of a Wannabe
Welsch, a prolific author and anthropology professor, here offers an honest, self-effacing memoir of his years spent as “a mainstream, middle-class, educated white man” who was also a “wannabe” Native American. To be a wannabe,  he says, is a way of better understanding culture in general, and one’s own culture in particular. Beginning in 1964—when he ineptly joined in his first Omaha handgame, a complicated game with a myriad of ancient, unwritten rules—Welsch  gradually became more and more involved in the Omaha and Pawnee communities surrounding his family home in Nebraska. Eventually, he was formally adopted by the Omaha Nation, and later his involvement in Pawnee repatriation efforts lead to the deeding of his and his wife’s “pitiful 60 acres of land” to a band of Pawnees so they could rebury their repatriated remains on that sacred ground, which was part of their original homeland. Though an anthropology scholar, Welsch is never pedantic or preachy. Instead, this is a heartfelt and very personal story, rich in wry and self-deprecating humor. --Deborah Donovan