3.75⭐️

Halfway through reading this I looked up the author and was disappointed to learn that she is a white woman who lied about being Indigenous. In a 2021 C-SPAN2 interview she stated: "I never had ties with anything. It's pretty certain that probably my mother was not Cherokee... There's no tracing it... I certainly would not call myself Cherokee." I think these lies are problematic and makes the positioning of the book dishonest—“the first history of the United States told from the perspective of [I]ndigenous peoples”…it’s not that…

I decided to finish the book because there is a lot of interesting historical information to learn about despite my issue with the author. However, I have another issue. The book is primarily military and ‘legal’ history—not art, culture, spirituality, food systems, etc. things that make people people…so the title could also better reflect the focus in that regard as well. This was a history of the colonial genocide of Indigenous peoples by settlers—which is a specific topic not an overall history. There are occasional mentions of things like controlled burnings or the cultivation of corn but most of the content is about colonial documents and rhetoric (Dawes Act, manifest destiny, etc), massacres, and other violence done to Indigenous peoples. There are stories about Indigenous resistance—militant strategies and protests like at Alcatraz 69-71. And storytellers providing testimony about the abuse they suffered in residential schools.

These violent, genocidal, colonial histories inform the present violence, colonialism and genocide—and it’s something most USAmericans don’t learn the truth about, and thus the colonial rhetoric and violence continues. So, it is still a great book to learn more about these history of violence against Indigenous peoples that the United States has enacted from the start. I just take issue with how it’s presented. The writing itself is engaging—academic but not inaccessible—and flows from topic to topic well. She is unequivocal about condemning colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism—which is amazing as well. I have very mixed feelings but there is value in this text.