An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
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4.4 • 71 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
American Indian activist and scholar Dunbar-Ortiz (The Great Sioux Nation) launches a full-bore attack on what she perceives as the glaring gaps in U.S. history about the continent's native peoples. Professional historians have increasingly been teaching much of what Dunbar-Ortiz writes about, yet given what she argues is the vast ignorance of the Indigenous experience, there still remains a knowledge deficit that needs to be rectified. She describes the U.S. as "a colonialist settler state, one that, like the colonialist European states, crushed and subjugated the original civilizations in the territories it now rules." The conventional national narrative, she writes, is a myth that's "wrong or deficient, not in its facts, dates, or details but rather in its essence." What is fresh about the book is its comprehensiveness. Dunbar-Ortiz brings together every indictment of white Americans that has been cast upon them over time, and she does so by raising intelligent new questions about many of the current trends of academia, such as multiculturalism. Dunbar-Ortiz's material succeeds, but will be eye-opening to those who have not previously encountered such a perspective.
Customer Reviews
Great education
I had no idea just how much damage the Europeans had done to this continent nor was I aware that the indigenous people were so populous.
History of the relationship between the state/settlers and indigenous peoples
This is a history, not so much of the indigenous peoples of the United States, but of their relationship with the state and with white settlers. Dunbar-Ortiz is a descendent of Native Americans and an activist historian a la Howard Zinn. This work contains very little original history, but condenses the work of other historians, especially Native American historians or historians who study and write about Native Americans without promoting a Eurocentric, colonialist, or pro-government agenda.
Dunbar-Ortiz demonstrates how settler colonialism is at the root of the U.S.'s founding and its history through westward expansion, 20th century imperialism, and even the War on Terror, and how it has shaped the relationship between the state/settlers and indigenous peoples in the U.S. and beyond. There are unfortunately a few moments where Dunbar-Ortiz makes claims that appear to be biased and are not well-supported by evidence or citation, but the work is mostly well-cited. It offers many facts and perspectives that had me highlighting, thinking about, and planning to research further.
Overall, this is a wonderful work worthy of Zinn's "People's History" label. I learned a great deal from this book. It challenged and changed my views on much of my country's history. It pointed me to other works on these subjects that I look forward to reading. Dunbar-Ortiz also suggests solutions that the government could implement to restore the culture, welfare, and autonomy of native peoples residing within the U.S. borders.
Essential Reading
To anyone who has any sense of justice. For anyone who has a heart, mind and soul that believes we can make a more just and peaceful world. For anyone who has just a smidgen of compassion left in them. For anyone who has a hope left in the survival of our planet and the human race. I recommend this book to all of humanity everywhere.