An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (ReVisioning History Book 3)

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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-Ortizoffers 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.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00J6Y98UE
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Beacon Press (September 16, 2014)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 16, 2014
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1747 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 314 pages

Customers say

Customers find the book very informative, well-researched, and interesting. They describe it as a great read with lucid prose. Readers also find the story poignant, shocking, and heartbreaking. However, some feel the author is deeply biased and dogmatic.

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9 reviews for An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (ReVisioning History Book 3)

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    Pookey

    True History
    The book was amazing. It’s great to hear the history as it really was. Instead of covering up the truth it’s the true story.

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    Moral Innovator

    excellent reference that supports the global moral innovation framework
    Humanity has not changed over the last 5-10,000 years. When we settled down to become farmers, we produced more food than we consumed, and four ancient civilizations dominated humanity 5,000 years ago – Egypt, Sumer, India and China. Egyptians enslaved Jews and evolved through the Roman Empire that officially adopted christianity in 380ce and became the 2.3 billion Christians worldwide today by migrating westward to Europe and the Americas, along with Africa that is shared with Muslims (who evolved through the Sumer-Amorites-Hittites-Persians-Ottoman route).Roxanne’s book is a descriptive look at the U.S. History that details the genocide of the Native Americans under a nicer label of ethnic cleansing today. The tactics, attitude, use of Christianity backed up by military force form the core of the Innovator World of Christians who focus a lot more on innovations than morality. To sustain humanity, we must balance innovations with morality reflected in the universally accepted golden rule: Do unto others what you want others to do unto you. Especially in this age of Internet, no one can continue to hide behind Hollywood fantasies and brainwash our children through education that do not reflect reality. This book is refreshing, detailed, and very descriptive (albeit depressing at times). The content is available in bits in pieces everywhere. This is among the first attempts I know that integrate the pieces together as they relate to Native Americans. There are still a few missing pieces like the 1529 Treaty of Zaragoza was a complement to the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas that defined the world as Spanish and Portuguese territory, only to encourage the innovative British empire to conceptualize a new type of entity called “company.” The British East India Company started in 1600 partly to bypass the authority of the Pope, after they learned the tremendous wealth available in the New World especially after 1588 when the British defeated the Spanish Armada that was funded by the 20% royalty collected from all trades in the Americas. Native American history is an important piece of USA history as part of the global Christianity community component of the Christian, Muslim, Indian and Chinese communities that make up over 90% of humanity today and analyzed in the Moral Innovations framework.The key shortcoming of the book is what future actions to take. The last couple of pages address education, but descriptive education of the past is not enough. The value that should be taught to our children is to balance innovations with integrity by following the golden rule. There is too much of a disconnect if there is an abrupt introduction of a descriptive textbook of Native American history. It will take time and sustained effort to address and evaluate how USA must re-assess the push for global human rights when imperial USA abuses its own Native Americans who worked well with African American slaves during the civil war.USA is a great nation. It is driven by Protestant values and a core attribute is the American Dream which gives opportunities for the motivated to pursue success. This is becoming more difficult as the wealth gap widens. However, joining the pursuit of money by conforming to the abuse of fellow Native Americans should not be encouraged. Some schools teach tools of trade that ignores core values, but it is the core values such as moral innovations that sustain a great society like the USA.This book is a must read to start in that direction. Check out the blog moralinnovator.wordpress.com

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    Strahd

    A great book!
    I got this for one of my classes. Let me tell you this is a read, a very good read. I knew of some things that this spoke on, but I’d say about 70% of it was new information, information that you don’t hear in school as it is being suppressed, unless you have a great teacher who wants you to know all history. If history is what you like, then get this book. It isn’t that long, about 240 pages, so you wont get bogged down but it os an eye opener and what occurred here is still occurring in the world today.

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    daleelaine

    An Inconvenient Historical Truth
    (This book is also available with the subtitle “For Young Readers” and is a condensed version with easier terminology and definitions)-Dunbar paints a rather gruesome, factual, inconvenient picture of US history as it impacted the tribes, nations, culture, societies that existed in the Americas prior to white European entry. She emphasizes the point that Europeans did NOT “discover” the continent (since millions of natives were already in the Americas). (Of course one could claim that the continent was a discovery for Europeans, but the former concept, according to the author, is what premises the “manifest destiny” concept to justify European conquest of the land and extermination of the natives.) There may be times that Dunbar overstates the conquest, but the fact of annihilation of natives is certainly an inconvenient truth and is compared to the Hebrew conquest of the Canaanite lands in biblical texts.-p 25 Before Europeans, America was occupied by millions of natives. “Each indigenous nation or city-state or town comprised an independent, self-governing people that held supreme authority over internal affairs and dealt with other peoples on equal footing. Among the factors that integrated each nation, in addition to language, were shared belief systems and rituals and clans of extended families that spanned more than one town. The system of decision making was based on consensus, not majority rule. This form of decision making baffled colonial agents who could not find Indigenous officials to bribe or manipulate.” In governance, for some groups the male elder was the executive. In other groups like Muskogees, there were 3 branches: 1) civil administration, 2) military, 3) sacred. The Haudenosaunee had “Great Law of Peace” which inspired essential parts of the US Constitution, (though Dunbar does not say exactly which parts but one may conclude it is also the US 3 branches of government.) And they also had 3 principles: 1) Peace, 2) equity and Justice, and 3) to be of one mind, unity. The point is that Indigenous groups had a thriving society and governance among themselves and thus can’t be written off as heathen, savages, p 26. “By the time of the European invasions, Indigenous peoples had occupied and shaped every part of the Americas, established extensive trade networks and roads, and were sustaining their populations by adapting to specific natural environments, but they also adapted nature to suit human ends,” which was by using fire to their advantage for example to burn undergrowth to foster more growth or to better manage deer populations for hunting, p 27. William Cronon notes that natives were: “…harvesting a foodstuff which they had consciously been instrumental in creating” in terms of buffalo and plants, and “Native Americans created the world’s largest gardens and grazing lands—and thrived. Native peoples left an indelible imprint on the land with system of roads that tied nations and communities together across the entire landmass of the Americas” which were used by settlers and at times became current modern highways p 28-9. (i.e. US 12 in S. MI from Detroit to Chicago—the Saulk trail). “North America in 1492 was not a virgin wilderness but a network of Indigenous nations, peoples of the corn”. Corn and squash were staple vegetables for many and corn was a sacred gift of an ancestral “corn woman”, p 30.

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    Fred S.

    This is a remarkable book. It is much more than Native American history.The book is interesting to read. While it talks about historical facts, it keeps the reader engaged and always wanting more.The writer made some great analogies to modern policies and how past history is still being applied today.I did not always agree with the analogies, but the logic and the connections are undeniable.In many parts of the book, I wondered how I never heard of this before. On many occasions I had doubts that this is really what happened. Every time I checked with other references, all the facts in the book were proven true.This just testifies to how much I did not know about native history.Being an immigrant myself, I have always wondered why native history is not in the front page. Why is it not the first hall in our museums. My children learned very little about that history at school.In many parts of the book, I had to stop reading because it was hard to know about all these atrocities.Many of immigrants like myself, think we were never part of this genocide. Therefore, it is not our fault.I think if we did not pay attention to Native rights and struggles to have a decent life, then we are not as innocent as we claim.

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    BROKEN PROMISES

    There are many stories about black people in America in this book. The white people really hurt them during the civil war. I feel bad for them. Decent book. Also they killed all the Natives but thats how you rule countries.

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    Yvonne

    If you’re really interested in History, you must read this book. We must face the lies we’ve built our modern way of thinking on, and this book will tear down many of the myths we’ve woven about the democratic, well intentions of our Western societies.If we don’t face these truths, we’ll continue doing what the indigenous peoples of America have suffered from for so long. And this is not very Christian. Nor democratic. Nor well intended.

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    Mr. G. Jumbo

    Excellent

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    Tevis Buckles

    Although I am not finished reading this book, I feel that it should be on the reading list of every high school history class. It is time to rewrite the old history books. The settlers committed a genocide, period, end of story.

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    An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (ReVisioning History Book 3)
    An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (ReVisioning History Book 3)

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