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orcabooksoly's review
challenging
informative
medium-paced
4.0
How are border towns used to isolate, hurt, and destroy native lives? How do they work in conjunction with capitalism, private property, heteropatriarcal society, and disease (like Covid-19) to continue to settle this land, and how do we stop them?
aibird's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
Brilliant deconstruction of settler colonialism, how it is applied in our lives, the layers of it, and how to start the process of decolonization. The content warnings I listed is for the explanations of the brutality experienced by the Indigenous by agents of the state.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder
Moderate: Death, Hate crime, Ableism, Child abuse, Forced institutionalization, Sexual violence, Suicide, Colonisation, Medical trauma, and Police brutality
shelleyanderson4127's review
4.0
This is an unflinching look at the multitude of human rights abuses Native people experience in US bordertowns. A bordertown, as the authors define it, is a white dominated municipality that exists on the borders of current Native reservations in the US. Given that the entire US is built on land stolen from Native nations, every US city and town is essentially a bordertown.
There is a meticulous analysis of anti-Indian violence and stereotypes, from Indian rolling to forced sterilization, alcohol to homelessness, that makes for grim reading. While there is some essential history which is very useful for a non-Native reader such as myself, the book's focus is on the current situation, with glimpses towards a future where Native peoples can flourish. While the book rightly celebrates the fact that Native peoples and cultures have survived in the face of unrelenting attempts to destroy them, I would have appreciated more analysis on exactly how that survival was accomplished. The authors acknowledge how the 1960s Civil Rights and Black Power movements encouraged Native organizing and draw parallels between anti-Black racism and anti-Indian hatred. This reader appreciated the authors' gender perspective and their clear statement that any movement for Indian liberation must include Native women and girls and the LGBTQI2S communities.
The book is an indictment, in clear and simple language, of white settler colonialism, and of capitalism. It is hence a primer for anyone interested in Native liberation. It's a call to action whose last two chapters focus on what needs to be done. It is not a practical manual for social change, with a plan of action, but more of a theoretical framework for what steps need to be taken for true decolonization.
There is a meticulous analysis of anti-Indian violence and stereotypes, from Indian rolling to forced sterilization, alcohol to homelessness, that makes for grim reading. While there is some essential history which is very useful for a non-Native reader such as myself, the book's focus is on the current situation, with glimpses towards a future where Native peoples can flourish. While the book rightly celebrates the fact that Native peoples and cultures have survived in the face of unrelenting attempts to destroy them, I would have appreciated more analysis on exactly how that survival was accomplished. The authors acknowledge how the 1960s Civil Rights and Black Power movements encouraged Native organizing and draw parallels between anti-Black racism and anti-Indian hatred. This reader appreciated the authors' gender perspective and their clear statement that any movement for Indian liberation must include Native women and girls and the LGBTQI2S communities.
The book is an indictment, in clear and simple language, of white settler colonialism, and of capitalism. It is hence a primer for anyone interested in Native liberation. It's a call to action whose last two chapters focus on what needs to be done. It is not a practical manual for social change, with a plan of action, but more of a theoretical framework for what steps need to be taken for true decolonization.
butterflyheart20's review
5.0
A must-read, both timeless and timely book that dismantles several terminologies and violences that threaten Indigenous people. On of the biggest awakenings was the passage on human rights and how this term and any collection "liberties" umbrellaed under this term relies on the settler state in order to exist.
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