I was misremembering the criticism: the argument isn't that Kandiaronk didn't exist, but that the specific recorded dialogues might not have--basically, "Kandiaronk was an impressive and erudite chief" and "Lahontan used Kandiaronk as inspiration for a dialogue he made up" are two facts that could coexist simultaneously.
Bell (the author of the negative review) is arguing hard against Graeber and Wengrow's main source, but I don't have TDoE in front of me, so I can't tell if he's cherry-picking or if that's the only source we have for Kandiaronk's arguments. The main source has surprisingly few citations in Google Scholar (you can see excerpts from it here; I haven't gone over them yet), and searching for "Kandiaronk" brings up a bunch of reviews for TDoE. (This is an interesting, if poorly formatted, exception.)
I think the question hinges on, does it matter if Kandiaronk himself made the points in the Dialogues, or if Lahontan was inspired by observing the Wyandot and talking with Kandiaronk to write his own critique of Enlightenment France? It would if your focus is on centering lost Native voices, but for Graeber and Wengrow's purposes I'm not sure it actually does. If I'm understanding correctly, their larger point is that nothing about our current development was inevitable (which makes me wonder if they talk about path dependency at all), so it doesn't necessarily matter if the critique came directly from an indigenous speaker or from someone influenced by an indigenous speaker, just that the critique exists. But if you're being a stickler for accuracy, and "don't get too far out over your skis" is one of the criteria you use to judge a book, then TDoE may start looking weak. (Bell prefaces his discussion of TDoE's treatment of Kadiaronk by pointing out that, contra TDoE, Jean-Jacques Rousseau did not actually grow up in aristocratic privilege.)
no subject
I was misremembering the criticism: the argument isn't that Kandiaronk didn't exist, but that the specific recorded dialogues might not have--basically, "Kandiaronk was an impressive and erudite chief" and "Lahontan used Kandiaronk as inspiration for a dialogue he made up" are two facts that could coexist simultaneously.
Bell (the author of the negative review) is arguing hard against Graeber and Wengrow's main source, but I don't have TDoE in front of me, so I can't tell if he's cherry-picking or if that's the only source we have for Kandiaronk's arguments. The main source has surprisingly few citations in Google Scholar (you can see excerpts from it here; I haven't gone over them yet), and searching for "Kandiaronk" brings up a bunch of reviews for TDoE. (This is an interesting, if poorly formatted, exception.)
I think the question hinges on, does it matter if Kandiaronk himself made the points in the Dialogues, or if Lahontan was inspired by observing the Wyandot and talking with Kandiaronk to write his own critique of Enlightenment France? It would if your focus is on centering lost Native voices, but for Graeber and Wengrow's purposes I'm not sure it actually does. If I'm understanding correctly, their larger point is that nothing about our current development was inevitable (which makes me wonder if they talk about path dependency at all), so it doesn't necessarily matter if the critique came directly from an indigenous speaker or from someone influenced by an indigenous speaker, just that the critique exists. But if you're being a stickler for accuracy, and "don't get too far out over your skis" is one of the criteria you use to judge a book, then TDoE may start looking weak. (Bell prefaces his discussion of TDoE's treatment of Kadiaronk by pointing out that, contra TDoE, Jean-Jacques Rousseau did not actually grow up in aristocratic privilege.)