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bean_season 's review for:
An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
First off I should mention that there's some ongoing controversy about the author's Native identity because she said her mother was part Native but hid it from the family and then died from alcoholism, but her brother disputes the story and some of her details have kept changing over the years. I don't know what to think about all that. As far as the title, she didn't chose it, it was part of a series of several "A ____ People's History of the US" books. But I have sympathy for people who were frustrated.
It was a good review and I learned some new things, but it was frustrating that I had to fact check so often because some information was worded misleadingly. To give a benign example, when she came to the supreme court court decision Worcester v. Georgia, she said that Andrew Jackson basically said "Well, John Marshall has made his decision, but now let him enforce it," paraphrasing the famous quotation without noting that it's unclear whether or not it's apocryphal. I know it doesn't matter as far as the effect because it accurately reflected his attitude and actions after the ruling, but why not be precise? There's a few other splitting hairs things of more consequence, that have more impact because after reading the book someone might say to their friend, "Hey, did you know it was the Scots-Irish that introduced scalping to North America?" and their friend could easily get out their phone and point them to a reputable source saying there's well-documented evidence of pre-Colombian scalping in North America. The innocent person might then go back to the text and realize it was only heavily implied by her writing choices that it was a newly introduced practice. It would have been better to just simply not imply that because there's just so much evidence of scalping all around the globe and it doesn't mean the descendants of those populations deserved to be murdered/displaced/etc.
It was a good review and I learned some new things, but it was frustrating that I had to fact check so often because some information was worded misleadingly. To give a benign example, when she came to the supreme court court decision Worcester v. Georgia, she said that Andrew Jackson basically said "Well, John Marshall has made his decision, but now let him enforce it," paraphrasing the famous quotation without noting that it's unclear whether or not it's apocryphal. I know it doesn't matter as far as the effect because it accurately reflected his attitude and actions after the ruling, but why not be precise? There's a few other splitting hairs things of more consequence, that have more impact because after reading the book someone might say to their friend, "Hey, did you know it was the Scots-Irish that introduced scalping to North America?" and their friend could easily get out their phone and point them to a reputable source saying there's well-documented evidence of pre-Colombian scalping in North America. The innocent person might then go back to the text and realize it was only heavily implied by her writing choices that it was a newly introduced practice. It would have been better to just simply not imply that because there's just so much evidence of scalping all around the globe and it doesn't mean the descendants of those populations deserved to be murdered/displaced/etc.