Today in the United States\, there are mor e than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous nations comprising nea rly three million people\, descendants of the fifteen million Native peopl e who once inhabited this land. The centuries-long genocidal program of th e US settler-colonial regimen has largely been omitted from history. Now\, for the first time\, acclaimed historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Orti z offers a history of the United States told from the perspective of Indig enous peoples and reveals how Native Americans\, for centuries\, actively resisted expansion of the US empire.
\nWith growing support for move
ments such as the campaign to abolish Columbus Day and replace it with Ind
igenous Peoples' Day and the Dakota Access Pipeline protest led by the Sta
nding Rock Sioux Tribe\, \;An Indigenous Peoples' History of the Unite
d States \;is an essential resource \;providing historical threads
that are crucial for understanding the present. In \;An Indigenous Pe
oples' History of the United States\, Dunbar-Ortiz adroitly challenges the
founding myth of the United States and shows how policy against the Indig
enous peoples was colonialist and designed to seize the territories of the
original inhabitants\, displacing or eliminating them. And as Dunbar-Orti
z reveals\, this policy was praised in popular culture\, through writers l
ike James Fenimore Cooper and Walt Whitman\, and in the highest offices of
government and the military. Shockingly\, as the genocidal policy reached
its zenith under President Andrew Jackson\, its ruthlessness was best art
iculated by US Army general Thomas S. Jesup\, who\, in 1836\, wrote of the
Seminoles: "The country can be rid of them only by exterminating them." \;
Spanning more than four hundred years\, this classic bott
om-up peoples' history radically reframes US history and explodes the sile
nces that have haunted our national narrative.
The is a virtual ev ent and registration is required. \; You will receive a link one day b efore the event.
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