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A review by storytold
An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
4.5
This is a fantastic, quite systematic, and certainly needed overview text of US history with a historiographical focus on Indigenous perspectives. This was the project of the book: to ensure it was possible to provide a recommendation when asked for decolonial overviews of US history. Its other project was to force into question the legitimacy of US statehood as it exists, which I thought it also did very deftly. I was surprised to find this was written in 2014, before the Trump presidency; it was critical of Obama while he was still in office, and I think this recommends the book all the more. It's been eight more years of shit since this book was published that serves to further the points made in the book. The book has an argument, and it makes it systematically and convincingly. For what I would call a textbook, it was incredibly compelling in both writing and argument.
I do believe it is meant to be a textbook, and so by necessity it is an overview. This is not a flaw of the text. It provides historical anecdotes from among individual Indigenous nations to exemplify its points, but simply can't go in-depth by region, nation, or time because of its goals and priorities. What it does especially well is, from a shifted paradigm, argue very well for a perspective on US history that differs from what is traditionally taught. Its final argument is to call for changes in how history is taught, which justifies its format as a textbook: it is itself an example of changing those paradigms.
In its format as a textbook, it allows and encourages readers to extrapolate further questions on the events, times, and personages it covers. It must be understood as an overview, and in that light it might be perceived as basic or introductory. Lots of close-focus, qualitative history is out there to answer tighter questions, and to try to do that here would have been a failure of the structure. I think it is introductory of a certain point of view for many. This is an asset of the text, and perhaps its intent. It is also incredibly informative and detailed, and I learned a ton from it. As a former instructor in early Canadian history, I'd have reached for this equivalent as a baseline textbook in a heartbeat; also as a Canadian, I also found it useful in filling in some historical gaps as someone who's never studied significant portions of US history with any degree of intention. It's a book that does a lot of things deftly, and I think anyone who's not an expert on decolonial American history would benefit from having it on their shelf—as a cohesive narrative to read front to back, as well as for recurring reference thereafter.
I do believe it is meant to be a textbook, and so by necessity it is an overview. This is not a flaw of the text. It provides historical anecdotes from among individual Indigenous nations to exemplify its points, but simply can't go in-depth by region, nation, or time because of its goals and priorities. What it does especially well is, from a shifted paradigm, argue very well for a perspective on US history that differs from what is traditionally taught. Its final argument is to call for changes in how history is taught, which justifies its format as a textbook: it is itself an example of changing those paradigms.
In its format as a textbook, it allows and encourages readers to extrapolate further questions on the events, times, and personages it covers. It must be understood as an overview, and in that light it might be perceived as basic or introductory. Lots of close-focus, qualitative history is out there to answer tighter questions, and to try to do that here would have been a failure of the structure. I think it is introductory of a certain point of view for many. This is an asset of the text, and perhaps its intent. It is also incredibly informative and detailed, and I learned a ton from it. As a former instructor in early Canadian history, I'd have reached for this equivalent as a baseline textbook in a heartbeat; also as a Canadian, I also found it useful in filling in some historical gaps as someone who's never studied significant portions of US history with any degree of intention. It's a book that does a lot of things deftly, and I think anyone who's not an expert on decolonial American history would benefit from having it on their shelf—as a cohesive narrative to read front to back, as well as for recurring reference thereafter.