I just finished this amazing book today and I will always be thinking about it everywhere I go in America. The book makes it impossible to understand America without also considering what was done to the native peoples of this continent in the name of civilization and religion. The book makes it very clear that America was created with genocide, slavery and the theft of a people's homeland.
The book focuses on the indigenous native people and how they were treated as being essential to understanding the history of America. I thought I knew a fair amount of the treatment of Native Americans over the centuries. I had read Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee and other books over the years about the Indian wars, massacres, reservations and genocide but after reading this book I realized I barely knew even the tip of the iceberg of what we did to the original inhabitants of this land. I had heard about the Indian schools and Carlisle but I didn't know the depth of the horrible things done to native children including all the abuse and murders. I was truly shocked.
There now is a new generation of Native American scholars, historians and authors writing about the true history of the US from the perspective of the victims of centuries of atrocities in the name of nation building.
I grew up seeing all of the Westerns on TV with the stereotypical cowboys and Indians. I had a Fort Apace toy set and when playing cowboys and Indians the Indians were always the bad guys.
I still find it hard to believe we still have sports teams with Indian names and references. They say they are honoring them. Really? The people we massacred. Mostly the women, children and elderly. I will struggle with this for a long time and I'm reading another book on the American history as seen through the eyes and pen of another Native American scholar... Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest For North America by Pekka Hamalainen. I've also been reading some other so called Woke histories of America in recent months.
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