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A review by tofugitive
An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
5.0
An incredible read. You think you know how bad the white man's takeover of what is now the United States of America was until you read this book. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz explains the history of our country and their interactions with and relations to the indigenous people of this land.
Dunbar-Ortiz's writing really, really helped me understand the white supremacist roots of our nation. Many people (myself included) look back on the US's history with race relations and the foundations of the country being rooted in white supremacy from the context of slavery to the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation and the ensuing years of racial hierarchy from the vagrancy laws to the Jim Crow laws to today's system of mass incarceration. This is all important and true, but the white supremacist foundations go way farther back from that. The white man's landing on the east coast of North America and ensuing centuries of westward expansion were directly responsible for the genocide of indigenous people.
I can't recommend enough to read this book and re-evaluate our relationship with the land we live on and the foundations of this country and the resulting racist hierarchy that has persisted since then.
Dunbar-Ortiz's writing really, really helped me understand the white supremacist roots of our nation. Many people (myself included) look back on the US's history with race relations and the foundations of the country being rooted in white supremacy from the context of slavery to the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation and the ensuing years of racial hierarchy from the vagrancy laws to the Jim Crow laws to today's system of mass incarceration. This is all important and true, but the white supremacist foundations go way farther back from that. The white man's landing on the east coast of North America and ensuing centuries of westward expansion were directly responsible for the genocide of indigenous people.
I can't recommend enough to read this book and re-evaluate our relationship with the land we live on and the foundations of this country and the resulting racist hierarchy that has persisted since then.