Paige Raibmon's book "Authentic Indians" takes a closer look at the concept of authenticity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Focusing on the culturally diverse Native peoples of the Northwest Coast, Raibmon examines how Native and non-Native peoples constructed and used the idea of ​​the authentic Indian to achieve their goals. Drawing examples from three "episodes" or stories about the indigenous peoples of the Northwest Coast, Raibmon argues that authenticity is not a fixed marker we can use to measure the distance between what an indigenous culture looks like today and what “real” indigenous culture looks like. as. Rather, Raibmon argues that authenticity is a set of important and shifting ideas that have been used in different ways to achieve different outcomes, including consolidating the many perceived dichotomies between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. She also explains how the concept of authenticity was important not only to Indigenous and non-Indigenous relationships in the late 19th century, but also to those same relationships today. Raibmon's book focuses on the stories of the people of the Northwest Coast in the late 19th century. States and Canada. She has two main reasons for doing so. The first is that this region was the focus of much of the work done by early American anthropologists. Early anthropologies focused on preserving “endangered Indians” as much as possible. In doing so, they provided numerous examples of what "authentic" Indians should look like with photographs as well as artifacts of "traditional" Indian culture. The second reason Raibmon placed his book here is that there were major political changes in the region at the same time. ...... middle of paper ...... and they weren't. Indigenous people took advantage of this opportunity to assert their Indigenous identity in a way that challenged the idea of ​​authenticity while also playing on that idea. This book and the indigenous peoples profiled within it succeed in showing how late 19th century ideas of authenticity can both be respected and challenged, perhaps reflecting how the definition of authenticity was created. An example given by Raibmon is the work of Aboriginal people in the hop fields. They were an important part of an important industry on the Northwest Coast that challenged the idea that authentic Indians were not part of modern economic endeavors, but at the same time, native people used this economic opportunity to maintain connections to their kinship network as well as to traditionally culturally important places.