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maiakobabe's review
challenging
emotional
informative
slow-paced
4.0
It took me a long time to read this book, as it was challenging to read a history of genocide while also seeing genocide in my phone every single day. But I'm ultimately very glad that I finished it. This is a well researched, approachable, indigenous-authored history of the native people in the land now called California. I enjoyed how place specific this book is. I felt much more connected to the history recognizing nearly every place name, and once the book got passed around the year 1900 I started to also recognize names of organizations that still exist and activists who I'm familiar with. I have a much better understanding of the patchwork creation of and the broken promises of the reservations, land allotments, and rancherias. I was happy whenever the book mentioned Pomo master basket weavers Elsie Allen and Mable McKay, who my mom has been telling me about for years, or Greg Sarris, Santa Rosa based chairman of the Graton Rancheria and author. I have a better understanding of this land where I have lived and worked all my life after reading this book.
princessdeleon's review
challenging
informative
sad
slow-paced
5.0
I learned so much about my home state and the people who have existed in it before anyone else. It made me quite angry to read things that happened to them that I had never learned before. To read the awful things this country and this state did.
grete_rachel_howland's review
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.25
In the vein of "Lies My Teacher Told Me" and "A People's History of the United States", the content in "We Are the Land" will leave you wondering why no one taught you these stories before and excited to share the facts with anyone willing to listen...if you can stick with it.
Unfortunately, as with many academic books, We Are the Land is dry. There's no doubt the authors worked on this project with love, respect, and a passion for telling California history from an Indigenous-centered perspective, but it is fact after fact after fact with almost no editorial personality and too few narrative connections to create any wave of story momentum for the reader to ride. Instead, she must persist of her own will to take in the information being presented.
In theory, I recommend the book, especially for folks raised in California whose only education about their state's history--like mine--centered on the missions and the Gold Rush with no mention of who else was there before and while all of that happened; at the same time, I wouldn't blame someone if they couldn't get through it. You have to want to read it for the sake of the information.
Something I did very much appreciate about the authors' style is the way they presented their sources in a more narrative format at the end of every section. Should one want to go back and follow the historical conversation about a particular event or era, they made it very easy to do so, and for that reason I'll be keeping the book on my shelf.
Unfortunately, as with many academic books, We Are the Land is dry. There's no doubt the authors worked on this project with love, respect, and a passion for telling California history from an Indigenous-centered perspective, but it is fact after fact after fact with almost no editorial personality and too few narrative connections to create any wave of story momentum for the reader to ride. Instead, she must persist of her own will to take in the information being presented.
In theory, I recommend the book, especially for folks raised in California whose only education about their state's history--like mine--centered on the missions and the Gold Rush with no mention of who else was there before and while all of that happened; at the same time, I wouldn't blame someone if they couldn't get through it. You have to want to read it for the sake of the information.
Something I did very much appreciate about the authors' style is the way they presented their sources in a more narrative format at the end of every section. Should one want to go back and follow the historical conversation about a particular event or era, they made it very easy to do so, and for that reason I'll be keeping the book on my shelf.