A new “Great Book”
Sometimes a book gets read and then fades away … very little impact other than enjoying a good story.
Sometimes a book gets read and not only makes an impact for days or weeks, but actually changes the way I think – re-organizes my mental models.
That’s this book – a new Great Book to put on your shelf (Wikipedia / Bookshop.org / Goodreads)
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States describes and analyzes a four-hundred-year span of complex Indigenous struggles against the colonization of the Americas. The book highlights resultant conflicts, wars, and Indigenous strategies and sites of resistance.
Wikidedia
I read this immediately after reading Finding the Mother Tree and Braiding the Sweetgrass … inserted too into this vector of thinking, for the last five years, I am researching my family’s arrival to North America – founders of Quebec and Mayflower passengers. I had a full head of colonial practices and westward moves of my family from east coast to Great Lakes area. Of course, like most readers, Howard Zinn’s People’s History of US cannot be ignored either and makes a perfect compliment.
My head, my heart, my mental models were turned upside down in a most factual, story telling manner. There was no denying what I learned as I had heard it all before in different ways, but held onto instructed models and interpretations of events – as a cultural Americans are terribly unreliable narrators.
This book has changed my life, my brain and my view of who I am … it is definitely now added to my list of “Life-affirming books“. Simply, a GREAT BOOK.
The author, Rozanne Dunbar-Ortiz has become a hero in my mind …
In her work An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Dunbar-Ortiz condemns the Discovery Doctrine and the settler colonialism that devastated Native American populations in the United States. She compares this form of religious bigotry to the modern-day conquests of al-Qaeda.[14] She states that, since much of the current land within the United States was taken by aggression and oppression, “Native peoples have vast claims to reparations and restitution,” yet “[n]o monetary amount can compensate for lands illegally seized, particularly those sacred lands necessary for Indigenous peoples to regain social coherence.”[14]
She is featured in the feminist history film She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry.[15][16]
She is Professor Emerita of Ethnic Studies at California State University, Hayward. Since retiring from university teaching,[17] she has been lecturing widely and continues to write.
Featured image of book cover from Wikipedia – man reading a great book – MSFT CoPilot
