Ishi's Brain reviewed by Yuki Miura

The book starts with the death of Ishi. This book is not a Ishi’s biography but it is how he lived his life after he was caught by the white people and how his funeral and his brain were treated.
The Indians wanted to get Ishi’s brain and ashes from white people because it was not following the Indians’ tradition. Some people suggested that they should keep Ishi’s brain at a museum, though removing Ishi’s organs and brain from his body is against his wishes. Some Historian said whites just wanted to “play India.” The Indians hope that their spirit and body would travel to the next world and would not return to haunt them.
In the book, there is one person who contributed his life to Ishi’s research, Rich Mertes, who learned about Ishi’s story in college and continued studying about him after the college. At first, Rich could not believe the life of the Indians because to him, it was very primitive. He described his thought as this, “Live here for thousands of years without f***ing it up.” However, although he could not believe it at first place, he admired the life of the Indians also. And, he was one of the biggest funs of Ishi. He admired Ishi and also sympathized with Ishi because Ishi lost his private, tribes, and everything. Rich and his friends found the cave where Ishi might have lived. In the article, he said, “if Ishi sometimes spent the night outside away from his comfortable bed in the museum, it was probably in the conical brush Yahi house that he constructed a bit farther down the hill.” Rich and his friends decorated the cave as a shrine, and Rich even slept there sometimes. So, you guys know how Rich was into Ishi. He said that I felt pretty connected to Ishi. I think he was going to the wrong direction. When Rich took his students to the cave, he mentioned that it does not matter if Ishi lived here or not, it is just an important place to think about the life of the Indians. As I said, some people suggested that they should keep Ishi’s brain at a museum, and Rich was one of the strongest opponents for the idea.
There is one interesting story about Ishi. Ishi was a gambling addict. Gambling was so popular in traditional Native California and we can assume that Ishi liked it too. He was even teaching how to do gambling to dental students so that he could have company. From this, we could understand how Ishi was enjoying the life in San Francisco and liked white people.
Native Americans hosted the Ishi’s funeral. But there were some questions—what if those other tribes of Native Americans were foreigner to him and he did not like it, what if he wanted his funeral to be hosted by the white people because he liked the life and people in San Francisco. According to the book, “group distinctions could be sometimes tense in the old Native California. Besides, many young Indians did not know much about Ishi. The author determined that those young people, who were Generation X who are facing problems of drugs, tobacco, and gangs, wanted to have some kinds of connection to their ancestor. The poster for the funeral said “Welcome Home Our Relative Ishi, May We Never Forget Our Ancestors.” From this, we can understand how much Ishi was tied to identity politics. Many Indians were seeing the Indians as the ancestors of theirs.
The strongest message of the book is “why not accept us from what we are? One hand, they abused us and treat us with prejudice and, on the other hand, they say we will not recognize you as Indian. I think that is wrong and something needs to be changed.” Through this statement made by one of the Indians, I felt the difficulty of the Indians early life in America.