A review by lingfish7
An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

dark informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

📖🎧This should be required reading for every American. It is not a hyperbole to say this book literally shifted my worldview. This history book is fairly concise and accessible, as each chapter highlights just a few of the important historical events that occurred from when white people first came to the continent all the way until modern day. 
 
The genocide the Europeans conducted against the indigenous tribes was no accident. Some history textbooks make it seem like it was inevitable for the tribes to be wiped out due to disease. But even the black plague in Europe only eliminated a third of the population. This book rewrites the narrative by focusing on just how insidious and malicious the hunt to exterminate all indigenous tribes was. It does not whitewash any piece of history in order to assuage white guilt. It paints a vivid, brutal portrayal of the goal to exterminate entire people groups in the name of white supremacy and Christianity. 
 
Things I learned from this book that shifted my worldview: 
  • The indigenous tribes had advanced agriculture, culture, societies, trade routes, government (democratic alliances between tribes and female representatives), etc. All of our major highways today were based off the routes the indigenous tribes used to travel. The Europeans wouldn’t have survived on U.S. soil if it hadn’t been for the agriculture and road systems indigenous people groups already established, which made it easier for them to essentially steal the thriving farmland.  
  • The European colonizers didn’t try to negotiate or live peacefully with the indigenous communities. Their white supremacy ideology told them that the people were “savages” (even though they were the ones who committed genocide) and so they took the philosophy that “The only good Indian is a dead Indian” and began increasing their genocidal efforts by paying local white settlers money per “Indian scalp.” Because they couldn’t differentiate from children or women or men (just by viewing the scalps) they mass murdered entire villages for profit. 
  • Each state only became an official U.S. state once there were enough of the indigenous populations either removed from the land or wiped out. It really makes you think twice about all of the states and what year they “became a state.” It has such a darker history than what I previously thought. 
  • Most of our presidents in the 1700’s and 1800’s were pro-genocide of the indigenous tribes and many got their political success through their war campaigns. Even George Washington made many decisions to wipe out entire villages and communities for the sake of the white man and their greed for land. 
  • I knew that Andrew Jackson was responsible for the trail of tears, what I didn’t know was that he overrode the Supreme Court’s decision which ruled that the tribes could not be forcibly removed. He told the Supreme Court that they could try to stop him but that he had the army at his command and he conducted his campaign regardless of the law. 
  • If it wasn’t for the intensely coordinated resistance efforts of the indigenous tribes to fight against colonization, there might not be anyone of indigenous heritage left. There were a handful of tribes that even escaped Jackson’s Trail of Tears. For centuries, there were concerted efforts to sabotage the white colonizer’s plans and fight back. There were even two brothers who organized a mass movement in conjunction with many different tribes to coordinate better and build a stronger resistance. They did not make it easy for the white man to take their land or exterminate their peoples. 
  • The book “The Last of the Mohicans” was white propaganda to assuage white guilt of the genocide. It rewrote the story as if it was a peaceful and inevitable transfer of power from indigenous communities to white people. It portrayed white people as just getting their just reward of manifest destiny land. It painted a myth that persists today.


Why was none of this taught in my history books in school? Why is there still an ongoing movement of erasure of indigenous communities? I am appalled at how this nation was founded on stolen land, genocide, and white supremacy. I am enraged at the way that this history was whitewashed in my education. And I am delighted that books like these are being written to set the story straight. 

Please read books like these that undo the whitewashed history we’ve been indoctrinated into. I am so glad I was able to buddy read this with Zana. We had such a thought provoking discussion as we each learned some of this history for the first time.
 

 
— Quotes —
 

 
“Subjugating entire societies and civilizations, enslaving whole countries, and slaughtering people village by village did not seem too high a price to pay, nor did it appear inhumane. The systems of colonization were modern and rational, but its ideological basis was madness.” (Pg. 44 in reference to the gold fever - Columbus and others searching for gold in the 1400’s and 1500’s)
 

 
“The continued popularity of, and respect for, the genocidal sociopath Andrew Jackson is another indicator. Actual men such as Robert Rogers, Daniel Boone, John Sevier, and David Crockett, as well a fictitious ones created by James Fenimore Cooper and other best-selling writers, call to mind D.H. Lawrence’s ‘myth of the essential white American’ - that the ‘essential American soul’ is a killer.” (Pg. 94)]
 

 
“The affirmation of democracy requires the denial of colonialism, but denying it does not make it go away.” (Pg. 116)
 
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