My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Thomas Jefferson once called the young United States of America an "Empire of liberty," first putting into words the idea that America had a destiny to spread freedom and democracy around the world. While the hypocrisy of that idea when juxtaposed against slavery and racial segregation, what is less known and even less understood is just how fraudulent such a phrase sounds to the Native Americans who inhabited the continent before the United States was even an idea. In this critical counterpoint to the historical narrative that most Americans know from school, Dr. Dunbar-Ortiz argues that the American project was always an imperialist policy of genocide against indigenous people in North America.
Dr. Dunbar-Ortiz starts this book with an introduction that is incredibly jarring as she uses the standard definition for genocide and applies that the colonial experience Native Americans have the U.S.'s expansion westward and beyond. It is an incredibly jarring start, one that, as a proud American, I was very taken aback by. However, with each chapter, Dr. Dunbar-Ortiz tells the history of America from Native Americans' perspective and it is hard to not see where she and others are coming from. By the end of this book, I came to a more full recognition of just how shameful America's past relations with Native Americans was and, in some ways, still is. Native Americans were pushed off their ancestral lands in a number of different ways, most often by squatting settlers, genocidal militias and Army troops. Once the Indians Wars were largely won, Native Americans were forced into boarding schools where their cultural identity was nearly erased (and too many children were sexually assaulted by missionaries and others) and their reservation lands were continually shrunk. Though some recent Supreme Court cases have begun to recognize Native Americans' claims, that has not always been the case and too many tribes are not allowed to return to their sacred lands, such as the Black Hills of the Dakotas. As much as slavery and racial segregation, America's treatment of Native Americans is another original sin of ours that has yet to be fully discussed and reconciled.
This book is not an easy book to get through. Like me, many Americans may find it difficult to square Dr. Dunbar-Ortiz's use of such terms as genocide, squatting, and others with the history of what we were taught in schools about America's unique past and destined place in the world. But, for those with an open mind and heart and a deep love of country and all those who live here, this is an incredibly necessary read. We must reconcile our nations past in order to have a brighter future. I highly recommend this book to all Americans who wish to see America begin that reconciliation process.
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