An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (ReVisioning History)
New York Times Bestseller
Now part of the HBO docuseries "Exterminate All the Brutes," written and directed by Raoul Peck
Recipient of the American Book Award
The first history of the United States told from the perspective of indigenous peoples
Today in the United States, there are more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous nations comprising nearly three million people, descendants of the fifteen million Native people who once inhabited this land. The centuries-long genocidal program of the US settler-colonial regimen has largely been omitted from history. Now, for the first time, acclaimed historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz offers a history of the United States told from the perspective of Indigenous peoples and reveals how Native Americans, for centuries, actively resisted expansion of the US empire.
With growing support for movements such as the campaign to abolish Columbus Day and replace it with Indigenous Peoples’ Day and the Dakota Access Pipeline protest led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States is an essential resource providing historical threads that are crucial for understanding the present. In An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Dunbar-Ortiz adroitly challenges the founding myth of the United States and shows how policy against the Indigenous peoples was colonialist and designed to seize the territories of the original inhabitants, displacing or eliminating them. And as Dunbar-Ortiz reveals, this policy was praised in popular culture, through writers like James Fenimore Cooper and Walt Whitman, and in the highest offices of government and the military. Shockingly, as the genocidal policy reached its zenith under President Andrew Jackson, its ruthlessness was best articulated by US Army general Thomas S. Jesup, who, in 1836, wrote of the Seminoles: “The country can be rid of them only by exterminating them.”
Spanning more than four hundred years, this classic bottom-up peoples’ history radically reframes US history and explodes the silences that have haunted our national narrative.
An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States is a 2015 PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature.
Now part of the HBO docuseries "Exterminate All the Brutes," written and directed by Raoul Peck
Recipient of the American Book Award
The first history of the United States told from the perspective of indigenous peoples
Today in the United States, there are more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous nations comprising nearly three million people, descendants of the fifteen million Native people who once inhabited this land. The centuries-long genocidal program of the US settler-colonial regimen has largely been omitted from history. Now, for the first time, acclaimed historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz offers a history of the United States told from the perspective of Indigenous peoples and reveals how Native Americans, for centuries, actively resisted expansion of the US empire.
With growing support for movements such as the campaign to abolish Columbus Day and replace it with Indigenous Peoples’ Day and the Dakota Access Pipeline protest led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States is an essential resource providing historical threads that are crucial for understanding the present. In An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Dunbar-Ortiz adroitly challenges the founding myth of the United States and shows how policy against the Indigenous peoples was colonialist and designed to seize the territories of the original inhabitants, displacing or eliminating them. And as Dunbar-Ortiz reveals, this policy was praised in popular culture, through writers like James Fenimore Cooper and Walt Whitman, and in the highest offices of government and the military. Shockingly, as the genocidal policy reached its zenith under President Andrew Jackson, its ruthlessness was best articulated by US Army general Thomas S. Jesup, who, in 1836, wrote of the Seminoles: “The country can be rid of them only by exterminating them.”
Spanning more than four hundred years, this classic bottom-up peoples’ history radically reframes US history and explodes the silences that have haunted our national narrative.
An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States is a 2015 PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature.
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Community Reviews
The book garners several mentions on lists and has won some awards. The book focuses almost exclusively on how Europeans and later white Americans oppressed the native population. One would fully expect that this would be part of the story but not to the near exclusion of all else. The breakdown of content before I gave up around the halfway mark:
a) oppression/killing/taking of land by whites: 95%
b) discussion of how natives leadership worked and self-governance worked: <1%, (a few paragraphs)
c) discussion of how natives tried to supply their food through farming/hunting: <1% (a few paragraphs),
d) discussions of natives, their religion and beliefs: <1% (a few paragraphs),
e) discussion of native tool-making, arts or other cultural aspects: <1%, (a few paragraphs),
f) discussion of interaction between native community members (parents to children, education, etc.): 0%,
g) discussion of native literacy and whether/how Mayan literacy did or did not spread North - 0%.
If you want to learn about natives themselves, how their communities worked (before and after white contact), how they filled their days (before and after white contact), then this book is not for you.
a) oppression/killing/taking of land by whites: 95%
b) discussion of how natives leadership worked and self-governance worked: <1%, (a few paragraphs)
c) discussion of how natives tried to supply their food through farming/hunting: <1% (a few paragraphs),
d) discussions of natives, their religion and beliefs: <1% (a few paragraphs),
e) discussion of native tool-making, arts or other cultural aspects: <1%, (a few paragraphs),
f) discussion of interaction between native community members (parents to children, education, etc.): 0%,
g) discussion of native literacy and whether/how Mayan literacy did or did not spread North - 0%.
If you want to learn about natives themselves, how their communities worked (before and after white contact), how they filled their days (before and after white contact), then this book is not for you.
A must-read. An incredibly well-researched and compelling work on the history we are not taught. I cannot recommend this book enough!
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