Writer and educator Thomas King turns his storytelling skills to the long uncomfortable relationship between First Nations people and Europeans in his latest book.

The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America flows out of his past as an activist but it also builds on the trademark humour of the author who penned The Dead Dog Café for CBC Radio.

The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America by Thomas King. (Doubleday Canada)

King’s book ranges over 500 years of history and retells the stories and myths of contact between Europeans and native people, including John Smith and Pocahontas, Will Rogers and Louis Riel. It also looks at the meaning of treaties, the real issue of land ownership and why modern developments such as the oilsands are more pressing for indigenous people.

“If I’m going to write a history, I’d better tell it in the story-telling mode so it has some sparkle,” King said in an interview with CBC’s Q cultural affairs show.

King, born in California to a Greek mother and a Cherokee father, says the book represents “a conversation I’ve been having with myself” for more than 50 years.

The overarching theme of the book is that non-Aboriginal North Americans never actually accept that live Indians, living today, can be genuine Indians. Their perceptions of Indians are shaped by movies, or by a stereotyped view of what an Indian is and they cannot come to grips with contemporary native realities.

Instead, they have the idea that native people have had things given to them, he told Q.

“I can’t tell people what to think, but if I can tell a story that gets their imagination and gets people thinking about the situation, then there’s a chance that maybe I can change their mind,” King said.

The Inconvenient Indian is published by Doubleday Canada. King, who has taught at the University of Lethbridge and University of Guelph, has a book tour planned to Winnipeg, Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Lethbridge, Alta., and Hamilton and Guelph, Ont.