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History, especially Indigenous history, is still a site of struggle in academia, in public education, and in the popular national imaginary. The narrative conventions of U.S. history often create convenient niches for the so-called \u201cIndian Wars\u201d under the umbrella of a \u201chistory of the West.\u201d Past atrocities safely remain in the distant past, perhaps unfortunate, but nonetheless in the past. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz\u2019s\u00a0An Indigenous Peoples\u2019 History of the United States<\/em>\u00a0derails this narrative. She contends that the genocidal history of the U.S. against Indigenous peoples was not only foundational to bring the nation into existence but\u00a0required<\/em>\u00a0to export it as a global project in the twenty-first century. Indigenous peoples, perhaps the first and longest standing enemies of U.S. empire, remain central to this history of the U.S. and its future.<\/span><\/p>\nFor this reason, Dunbar-Ortiz\u2019s highly accessible\u00a0An Indigenous Peoples\u2019 History<\/em>\u00a0of the United States<\/em>\u00a0is the\u00a0Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee<\/em>\u00a0of our times. When\u00a0Bury My Heart<\/em>hit bookstores in 1970, it became a national bestseller. Mass protests against the Vietnam War drew connections to the U.S.\u2019s genocidal and imperial past of Indian-hating and colonial massacres. In the same moment, the burgeoning Red Power movement was radically altering the landscape of Indigenous scholarship and political struggle on the domestic and international stages. It didn\u2019t call U.S. imperialism exceptional, but rooted in the genocide of Indigenous peoples. Dunbar-Ortiz, a participant in both of those struggles, writes in a time when the militarization of the globe under U.S. empire in a post-9\/11 world has again exposed the fallacy of U.S. democracy. Yesterday\u2019s enemies of empire, Indians, are made anew in our present moment as the ever-looming \u201cterrorist threat.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nTo understand this, Dunbar-Ortiz asks us to reconsider the foundation of the U.S., making several claims. First, the U.S. is a colonialist settler-state, which \u201cis not to make accusation but rather to face reality, unless Indigenous peoples are erased.\u201d (7) The \u201crefusal or inability\u201d of U.S. historians to understand their own history is the source of the problem, or \u201cthe absence of the colonial framework.\u201d (7)<\/span><\/p>\nSecond, Indigenous resistance is over five centuries old and needs to be re-framed within a broader history of the Americas that does not result in complete annihilation and disappearance. She writes, \u201cSurviving genocide, by whatever means, is resistance.\u201d (xiii) This also means rethinking history from an Indigenous perspective as active participants in shaping their own histories of themselves, the land, and the formations of U.S. colonialism.<\/span><\/p>\nLastly, U.S. \u201cculture of conquest\u201d means violence, genocide, expropriation, destruction, and dehumanization of Indigenous peoples. It is a historically rooted structure, not an event that happened in the past. Indian hating was a requirement to export colonial violence to rest of the world. \u201cPerhaps it was inevitable,\u201d Dunbar-Ortiz writes, \u201cthat the earlier wars against Indigenous peoples, if not acknowledged and repudiated, ultimately would include the world.\u201d (12)<\/span><\/p>\n
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