An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

This recurring theme is at the heart of Dunbar-Ortiz’s book and is continually present throughout the book from start to finish. Her repeated anecdotes and examples of Indigenous resistance from the beginning of European colonization to the present day show the ongoing nature of centuries of struggle. It also demonstrates the incomplete nature of the struggle for Indigenous survival and sovereignty. Dunbar-Ortiz, through her examples, explains that resistance can manifest in numerous forms. As she notes, “[p]eople do not hand over their land, resources, children, and futures without a fight” (8).

As Dunbar-Ortiz herself demonstrates, one means of resisting is to illuminate the reality of the past as part of educating U.S. society, which has fallen into the trap of its own origin myth. Telling the story of the history of the United States through an Indigenous perspective is a means of keeping Indigenous history and culture alive and resists the efforts to make Indigenous people disappear into larger U.S. society. Dunbar-Ortiz also reinforces the importance of Indigenous sovereignty through her particular use of language or quotes that reject U.S.-based terminology or names of particular places. For instance, she describes what is commonly referred to in U.