An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

Written by:
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Narrated by:
Laural Merlington

Unabridged Audiobook

Ratings
Book
65
Narrator
18
Release Date
November 2014
Duration
10 hours 20 minutes
Summary
Today in the United States, there are more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous nations comprising nearly three million people, descendants of the fifteen million native people who once inhabited this land. The centuries-long genocidal program of the U.S. settler-colonial regimen has largely been omitted from history.


Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz adroitly challenges the founding myth of the United States and shows how policy against the indigenous peoples was colonialist and designed to seize the territories of the original inhabitants, displacing or eliminating them. And as Dunbar-Ortiz reveals, this policy was praised in popular culture and in the highest offices of government and the military.


Spanning more than four hundred years, this classic bottom-up peoples' history radically reframes U.S. history and explodes the silences that have haunted our national narrative.
Reviews
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Lynne J.

I had my consciousness raised about our genocide of the indigenous people in this country and others. The author had a methodical approach that made it seem like a textbook—hard-going at times.

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Kim S.

The book isn't bad, but there are some organizational issues that make it difficult to follow. For example, when discussing the role of Calvinism in the formation of the US, she went on a tangent about the Spanish American war and modern debates on gun control. I think it would be better to move those bits to later portions of the book and then explain how they tie back to Calvinism.

Content was good. Narrator needs to learn many pronunciations of common words.

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Anonymous

Authors note ends at 8:38 for anyone out there <3

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Pocho

This is about the u told story of the USA even from colonial times. Hard to listen to because of the atrocities of those years and their implications in the present. Great read.

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Jeffrey B.

Fantastic content. So thought provoking.

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Chris Kraisser

It was very written and presented, but I felt the reading was one note, anger. and for all the right reasons, but I think it would have been better if there were some changes in tone throughout to then build back up to the angry tone.

This is a book worth reading/hearing, in this "woke" age of exposing all the myths--and they are only myths--about US exceptionalism. Though I support most of the author's conclusions and agree that obliteration of indigenous peoples was always a primary objective of this nation, this is not a balanced view of our history as there is no in-depth analysis of how racism and violence were able to corrupt and poison US history, right up to the present day, nor is there more than passing mention of historical efforts to counteract the genocidal actions. No heretofore-cherished historical figures are spared the author's scathing criticism, including George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama, John Kennedy, Daniel Boone, Kit Carson, and many others. Atrocities committed by native Americans are mentioned, but are not discussed in depth, and indigenous leaders are rarely criticized for their actions.

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Kenneth A.

Less a history of the indigenous people of the Americas than a racist, anti-white screed, with particular hatred for the United States of America. I'm glad it was a VIP selection, because I would have been really pissed if I had wasted a credit on this!!!

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