This comic series presents the true story of 1970s Native American rock band Redbone. Brothers Pat and Lolly Vegas start out passing as Latino (Mexican Americans) but they eventually decide to embrace their Native American roots and heritage bringing Redbone to life. In 1969, they signed a deal with Epic Records, then left commercial fame behind as AIM (American Indian Movement) and civil rights movement for Native Americans rose. The authors of this comic series did collaborate with the Vegas family. We get a combination of biography and history of Native American rights and their relations with the U.S. If you missed this part of 1960s and 70s U.S. history, or you want to learn something new, then this is a comic to pick up.

The story is told through the eyes of Pat Vegas telling the story to his daughter. Along the way we get history highlights and an overview of Native American history and some major events from the 1960s as well as some current events. The text is well written, and the story is compelling and interesting.

The art style is somewhat basic. A small issue is that some images are not lined up well, so following some of the text was not easy. Despite that, the art suits the story well enough, and the story is the main draw for this volume. It's a good story with a blend of drama and history. This is the kind of story that could make a good film in the right hands.

This is a title that I recommend for all libraries that collect graphic novels, Americana, and/or Native American topics as well as pop culture. I certainly plan to order a copy for our campus library. Overall this is one I really liked and highly recommend.

Thank you Netgalley for letting me read this book in return for an honest review.

While this is an interesting read about an interesting rock band, I found the layout quite hard for me to read. I have read a lot of manga and comics in my time but I found it hard to read this cohesively.
Rating: 3⭐
Would I Read It Again? No
Would I Recommend it? Yes but I suggest you read a few pages of it first (on Comixology) to see if you can get into the art style

I live in Oklahoma in the era of McGinty. My family is of Cherokee descent. I just finished reading a biography of Sitting Bull and a non fiction account of the Native American's battle with voting rights. I might be dating myself but Redbone was popular on the radio when I was a teenager. Come and Get Your Love had a good beat and was easy to dance to.....familiar????

Combining the history of this group of recording artists with manga will insure a wider reading base and an easier acceptance by today's youth. As Civid 19 robs tribes of their elders, it's extremely important to educate our youth on the trials that were suffered to allow them freedoms. 5 stars plus a standing applause for Christian Stabler and Sonia Paoloni!

This is an interesting look at an early rock group, but it really comes alive when it recounts important events in AIM and Native American history. Easily accessible, it's an important retelling of a little known movement. Great history and fun, read it with a soundtrack.

I imagine if you're a redbone fan, this might be right up your street. However, for me, I struggled with the art style and the storytelling, and while I thought their story was fascinating, especially as I knew very little about Redbone, the way it was told made it hard to follow. Some panels have text on both sides that need to be read in a certain order, and while I am not a graphic novel expert, I have read a fair few by now and know how to navigate them, so this is definitely a problem unique to this one.

While I enjoyed the history and thought the interweaving of Redbone's history with Native American history was very clever and a great way to learn more about Native American history, I did not find myself invested in the story being told. I'm not sure if the format for this was the wrong way to tell the story, or if i was the wrong audience, but I think this had so much potential and just fell flat.

Thank you Netgalley for a copy in return for an honest review.

To begin this review I do want to say how much I wish I knew about Redbone before I picked up this book. I had originally requested this book because of the premise, but I wasn't able to put two and two together about who this group was until reading their story.

Redbone was a group started by two brother that were of Native American decent. They began by making names for themselves in a time when they had to pass as Mexican in order to be accepted in the music industry. To hear this is something disheartening, but unfortunately not surprising; so many injustices have come to Native Americans and even the current events at Standing Rock are mentioned in this graphic novel.

As I continued reading, I felt proud that their story was being told because their history is important to hear, but the graphic novel did feel very rushed. In the beginning I didn't feel like I was introduced to who the narrator of our tale was, and I had to come to it as the story unfolded. In addition, there are so many amazing experiences that this group had, and it felt as if they were gleaned over to cover the surface of these events.

Even though this graphic novel was a quick read, and I wanted more, I still felt it is a graphic novel that needs to be read and shared with others.

The story of Redbone is an interesting look at what it was like to be Native American and try to work as a professional musician in the early days of rock'n'roll. The story starts with the Vegas brothers trying to pass themselves off as Mexican as there was less prejudice to suffer that way. There are a lot of ugly truths to reckon with in this story and it's enlightening for those of us interested in the Native American experience. However...

The art in this book left <b><i>a lot</i></b> to be desired. I read an advanced reader copy that was watermarked and everything, so some of the background colors may have been changed, but I had a ton of all white background pages with disjointed art in the foreground. Some of the art style shifted as time progressed in the story, but for the most part it was loose water colors over heavy, single line work. - I feel like the story didn't benefit from this stylistic choice.

The story is also presented as Pat Vegas telling his daughter (and eventually son) a bunch of stories about his days as a working musician. This felt sort of disingenuous, like how is he just now telling her the entire story of his career, and didn't bring anything to the story. At times it kind of slowed things down. This story could easily have been told without a straight, top to bottom narration, but as it stands it felt like a storytelling crutch.

The story of the band Redbone and their role in Native American protest in the 1970's was really interesting and not something I'd come across before. This format, this art and this story device I think make it a much harder sell to general readers and don't really put the best foot forward.

“The first struggle over Native American rights coincided with the birth of Redbone. The current fight is a continuation of struggles from the ‘60s. An entire people have woken up.”

Redbone: The True Story of a Native American Rock Band is a history of the band Redbone, but also intertwined with the history of Native Americans and liberation movements of the 60s and 70s.

The ethos of Redbone is putting their Native American identity front and centre, of counteracting years of forceful erasure by white settlers, and declaring boldly that they are proud of their Native heritage. This is why it is so important to put the history of Native Americans in with the history of Redbone - you really cannot separate the two.

It is an entertaining and fascinating look at the band, and shed light on history that I didn’t really know about.

I really enjoyed this story, but the layout of the book was disjointed and the artwork was rough in places. Recommended with reservations.

My Thoughts:
This band and this song was a little before my time so until the music came out on Guardians of the Galaxy, I was not aware of Redbone or "Come and Get Your Love," however, once you hear it, this song is sooooooo catchy. Thank goodness for YouTube and its ability to memorialize the song and the singers.

I love Indigenous and minority feel good stories that have to do with triumph versus reality, social justice wins versus protest and loss. I also love when the myriad of spider web connections catches me unaware (well in real life I do not love the idea of walking through a spider web, but metaphorical web encounters - I am all for it).

So the spider web story starts like this - a couple weeks ago I am on NetGalley showing my English language arts student teachers how and where I find books. This is part of my "live your craft" lecture. Anyway I am on Zoom, sharing my screen, and I go to NetGalley to show them how you can create a profile of book preferences, see what they have and I wanted to show them how to request books. Under YA and graphic novels, Redbone pops up on my computer. These companies and their algorithms know me and know that I like memoirs and am always on the hunt for Indigenous, minority, (non-Default White package) literature, both prose and graphic forms.
I can read it now so I click on it and it sits in my dashboard (and I go about my days).

Today, there was a Graphic Jam webinar from one of the big YA library sources (part of my lecture of living your craft is also to hang out with the YA librarians and go to the webinars that they go to) and they start talking about Redbone. I go to YouTube to get the video (above) and go to Amazon to buy the book, when [gasp!] I cannot see it because it has not released yet. I took a chance and went to NetGalley and happy day - I actually had already put it on my queue based (see, stepped in the spider web).

What I love about this story is that as another Indigenous person, I love to see that process of not necessarily "coming of age" but "coming of identity." Each of us embraces our cultural identity at different points. It is a painful process sometimes because we need to first turn our back on survival through assimilation and be vulnerable to step out of our safe bubble of invisibility or "passing." Redbone does just that. From the brothers Lolly and Pat changing their last name to Vegas versus Vasquez to sound more stage name fabulous and less Indian to getting advice from Jimmy Hendrix that it is obvious that they are Indian (not Mexican) and they cannot forget their roots. Hendrix suggested Redbone in 1967 but it was a seed that was planted and would take another three years before the boys could step into their identity as Redbone. The journey of stepping out of invisibility in this story is a powerful because when the text is sparse, the impact hits home more.

This book needs to be read. This voice needs to be heard. These stories need to be told.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this incredibly interesting, educational and inspiring graphic novel. I really enjoyed it.

Redbone, as the title suggests is the story of a Native American Rock Band, their rise and their involvement in the civil rights movement.

To me this sounded brilliant, something I immediately wanted to read. I love graphic novels and think it’s a amazing and accessible way to tell a non-fiction story.

Unfortunately for me, that is where the good points end. It was a good story, but for me I couldn’t gel with the style. I didn’t enjoy the haphazard way it was illustrated. There weren’t any clear panels in this, and for me I felt myself stumbling through it instead of enjoying it.

That is, however, only my opinion. I have no doubt that many others will thoroughly enjoy this book.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for a chance to read this book in exchange of an honest review.

The art style--splashes of color under pen-and-ink drawings with only occasional frames--can seem disjointed sometimes but is beautiful and the color scheme reflects the time period. The story is mildly interesting (to me at least) with good but not great dialogue and narration.

A low-barrier introduction to the American Indian Movement (AIM) that is wrapped around the interesting origin story of a popular band. There are plenty of books that discuss or touch on AIM, but many are esoteric or require substantial background knowledge. This graphic novel does not. It gives the reader a glimpse into the world of the 1960s and 1970s for Indigenous people --trying to break free and have their voices heard. That the artists in this book are literally voice artists is a significant statement about the important of using your voice and speaking or singing into power the needs and rights of native peoples.

There is an element of pan-nativism to this story and the way the band presented themselves. In this case, however, the intent was to unify and share stories as well as expressing the cross-cultural significance of song among North American Indigenous peoples. While historically, many native people have and still do consider themselves unique and separate societies (rightfully so), there is still an interconnected identity put on them by the colonial world we live in. Redbone, the band and the story, shined the light on this and as they say, "We were all wounded at Wounded Knee"

This was really creative. I think that they did a really nice job of showing the history of Redbone while interspersing current events like Standing Rock. I wish I knew a bit more about them going into it, because at times it was a little hard to follow. But overall, this was a great and well executed graphic biography/commentary. .

Sadly I won’t be reviewing this fully as I found the structure and layout of the overall graphic novel far too messy to immerse myself in the story. I am fairly new to graphic novels and so I am very used to clear panels with an obvious path for following the story. I did not find Redbone easy to follow at all.

The story itself was kind of thin, but the book has a lot of interesting historical information about the treatment of, and empowerment movements started by, Native Americans.

Well, I guess I gotta get on Spotify and listed to some Redbone! This is a band I knew nothing at all about, which was why I was intrigued to read this graphic novel. I enjoyed especially learning about the cultural and social context of the band's rise, and how they fit into AIM (American Indian Movement) and the protest at Wounded Knee. I also really liked the art which was lively and interestingly laid out - I also liked the use of turquoise and coral to represent the 60s and distinguish things from present day. Not as strong for me was some of the very detaily details about the band getting together - and also I thought it was strange that until the last chapter, the story was told in linear order but then suddenly swooped back to the founders' childhood. But I suppose that could be seen as a metaphor for one of the groups aims: to reclaim your past for a better sense of who you are.

This graphic novel is part rock and role memoir, part social justice history lesson, and both aspects fit together quite well. Most people will probably recognize their most famous hit "Come and Get Your Love", but their catalog was more extensive and had a focus on Native issues, which in all likelihood stopped their career in its tracks thanks to racist record labels. I really liked getting a lesson about a band I knew nothing about, as well as how it tied into the American Indian Movement and the protests and activism that group participated in. While I knew a fair amount about the various moments that they were talking about, this would be a great way to teach this pushed aside history to students. While the design of the images was sometimes confusing because of how it could bleed together, I got used to it pretty quickly and adjusted as needed. And I'm also not sure if it's still in progress at the moment, so it very well may change when it comes out.

I'm really glad that I picked up REDBONE: THE TRUE STORY OF A NATIVE AMERICAN ROCK BAND. It gave me a new band to explore, and that, quite literally, rocks.

If you’re a fan of Guardians of the Galaxy, you may have heard the hit song Come and Get Your Love. But you might not know the history of the song or the artists—Redbone, the first Native American rock band.

Before I read the book, I’d never heard of the band, the song, or the movie. But I do teach Native American high school students, and I’m always on the lookout for good books that highlight Native Americans.

The authors, who worked closely with Pat Vegas and his family, use comics within a graphic novel to flash back to important events in the band’s history as well as other historical events that shaped the band Redbone.

Native American students will take pride in how the Vegas brothers stood up for their heritage in a time when most people hid their Native roots. Pat’s experience at a Catholic boarding school mirrors the experience of many Native children who were forced into the residential school system.

Teachers, parents, and librarians need to read this important book to help them understand systemic racism against Native Americans. They’ll also have books to recommend to Native American youth looking for role models within their own culture.

Redbone understood epigenetics and cultural trauma long before scientists coined the terms. The lyrics to ‘We Were All Wounded at Wounded Knee’ reminds listeners that trauma lingers and hurts for generations.