An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States

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The first history of the United States told from the perspective of indigenous peoples Today in the United States, there are 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.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 Feni 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 than four hundred years, this classic bottom up peoples history radically reframes US history and explodes the silences that have haunted our national narrative. Free Read An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States [ By ] Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz [ Kindle ePUB or eBook ] – kino-fada.fr I received this book as part of the Goodreads First Reads program First, I should say that I recognize what a herculean proposition it would be to create a history of the United States as experienced by its Indigenous inhabitants I greatly respect both Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz for accepting the challenge and Beacon Press for its foresight in publishing its ReVisioning American History series and I think this book is an extremely important one I hope it will have far reaching ripple effects in th I received this book as part of the Goodreads First Reads program First, I should sa...Not so much a history of the Indigenous Peoples of North America as much as a re telling of American history that actually includes their unfortunate role within it, which is wayprominent in ways you haven t imagined.This is a succinct, powerful read whose basic premise, the US is a settler colonial power, screams at you throughout.The sections on the plight and horrific fate of the IPs are worth it alone, but the author does a helluva job revisioning America s history by showing the roots Not so much a history of the Indi...I ll keep this simple if you read this exceptionally researched and beautifully written book and still think the United States is great or has ever been great, you need to take a long hard look in your mirror, then ask your god for forgiveness.An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz is a good overview of U.S history from the perspective of the Indigenous Peoples of North America This is an important book This is not a pleasant book to read Dunbar Ortiz demonstrates that the United States, since its founding, has been a colonial settler empire She discusses several popular, big concept myths that obscure the reality of the United States The founding myth of the Thirteen Colonies breaking free An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz is a good overview of U.S history from the perspective of the Indigenous Peoples of North America This is an important book This is not a pleasant book to read Dunbar Ortiz demonstrates that the United States, since its founding, has been a colonial settler empire She discusses several popular, big concept myths that obscure the reality of the United States The founding myth of the Thirteen Colonies breaking free from the British Empire the myth of the Western Frontier the modern myth of the e...This was a difficult read The events covered are of course brutal, and there is so much to take in about the unimaginable cruelty of the white colonists of the Americas Every time I read about colonization which is ongoing , I learn it is somehow is even worse than I previously thought.This was also difficult in the sense that it is a ton of information to fit into one book, including a lot of numbers, names, dates, etc There is so much covered, but here are some of things I took away from This was a difficult read The events covered are of course brutal, and there is so much to take in about the unimaginable cruelty of the white colonists of the Americas Every time I read about colonization which is ongoing , I learn it is somehow is even worse than I previously thought.This was also difficult in the sense that it is a ton of information to fit into one book, including a lot of numbers, names, dates, etc There is so much covered, but here are some of things I took away from it Just how much the indigenous peoples of the Americas had shaped and changed the land before colonists arrived Dunbar Ortiz argues that had North America been the untouched wilderness that is part of the white myth of colonization, European colonists wouldn t have been able to survive They didn t know how to conquer wilderness What they did know how to do is conquer people, and steal their cultivated land, buildings, trade routes, roads, etc from them It s incredible that scalping is no...Not since David Stannard s American Holocaust The Conquest of the New World have I read such a clear history of the United States In no way do I want to diminish from the great work of Howard Zinn s A People s History of the United States but that text did not stay with me or speak to me in the same way that Dunbar Ortiz s book has It is r...The epigraph and concluding quote in the final chapter of this book sum up why it s such an important read That the continued colonization of American Indian nations, peoples, and lands provides the United States the economic and material resources needed to cast its imperialist gaze globally is a fact that is simultaneously obvious within and yet continuously obscured by what is essentially a settler colony s national construction of itself as an everperfect multicultural, multiracia The epigraph and concluding quote in the final chapter of this book sum up why it s such an important read That the continued colonization of American Indian nations, peoples, and lands provides the United States the economic and material resources needed to cast its imperialist gaze glo...One of the many things that unsettles me in my regular engagements with US history is the near total absence of any discussion, or seeming awareness, of the country as a colony of settlement The country s indigenous peoples are barely considered in the national story or for that matter in most of the historical texts We see it in the subtle and not so subtle language of US history in the settlement of the frontier in the opening up of the west, in the last of the Mohicans, of the One of the many things that unsettles me in my regular engagements with US history is the near total absence of any discussion, or seeming awareness, of the country as a colony of settlement The country s indigenous peoples are barely considered in the national story or for that matter in most of the historical texts We see it in the subtle and not so subtle language...The NODAPL struggle in North Dakota over the last year has encouraged me to revisit and deepen my understanding of what it means to be indigenous in the US Reading this book, wading through a history of genocide, offered a number of important reorientations for me As far as I know, there aren t other comprehensive histories of the US from the perspective of indigenous people s, however this could have been much better If anyone has any recommendations I d be excited to look into them.A few si The NODAPL struggle in North Dakota over the last year has encouraged me to revisit and deepen my understanding of what it means to be indigenous in the US Reading this book, wading through a history of genocide, offered a number of important reorientations for me As far as I know, there aren t other comprehensive histories of the US from the perspective of indigenous people s, however this could have been much better If anyone has any recommendations I d be excited to look into them.A few significant problems I had with the text Early on in the book there is a brief summary of life before colonization The author presents an argument against the idea that Native Americans were savages without civilization, government, etc , instead arguing that they constituted state like structures and forms of organization in some ways different, but equally intelligent compared to those of the colonizers Fundamentally, this form of argument is flawed since it is not a level ...While I am in passionate agreement with the thrust of this book that the United States is a crime scene founded on a systematic strategy of genocide I found Dunbar Ortiz to be an infuriatingly unreliable narrator It s unfortunate because I was excited to pick up this book and really, really wanted to like it.Early in the first chapter she describes indigenous diets as mostly vegetarian and persists throughout the book to refer to various tribes as indigenous farmers While it s true t While I am in passionate agreement with the thrust of this book that the United States is a crime scene founded on a systematic strategy of genocide I found Dunbar Ortiz to be an infuriatingly unreliable narrator It s unfortunate because I was excited to pick up this book and really, really wanted to like it.Early in the first chapter she describes indigenous diets as mostly vegetarian and persists throughout the book to refer to various tribes as indigenous farmers While it s true that some of America s native tribes possessed sophisticated systems of agriculture, it s widely known that hunting was an integral part of life animal protein was a prized and indispensable food source Not only that, but many tribes were nomadic hunter gatherers, something that the author scarcely acknowledges Is Dunbar Ortiz trying to portr...

An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States
  • 20 September 2018
  • Hardcover
  • 296 pages
  • 080700040X
  • Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
  • An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States