October 15, 2015
History Is Not the Past:
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Takes on the Mega-Genocide against the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas
By: Bill Fletcher Jr
Published 1 July 2015
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COMMENT: what has been done in the past must not be forgotten. The “Doctrine of Discovery” has destroyed so many!! |
Dunbar-Ortiz has constructed a very accessible examination of the history of the USA as seen through the eyes of the Native American/First Nations/Indigenous peoples.
There are two things that immediately emerged for me after reading Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s outstanding book, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States. The first had to do with US history itself. The second, and this may at first glance appear strange, was the plight of the Palestinians.
Dunbar-Ortiz has constructed a very accessible examination of the history of the USA as seen through the eyes of the Native American/First Nations/Indigenous peoples. In a remarkably condensed yet comprehensive form, she begins with an explanation of what Indigenous societies looked like prior to the European invasion. From there she takes the reader into an emotionally troubling, yet historically rigorous look at the European invasion/colonization of the Western Hemisphere and its ramifications.
What Dunbar-Ortiz helps the reader to understand, more than anything else, was that the genocide carried out against the Native Americans was not accidental. That may sound like a strange choice of words, but throughout so-called mainstream US history there is a tendency to suggest that the European colonization was, at least at first, well-intentioned, relatively benign, and had the unfortunate consequence of introducing deadly diseases into the Western Hemisphere which the immune systems of the peoples of the First Nations were unprepared to resist.
Click on Link:
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/History-Is-Not-the-Past-Taking-on-Indigenous-Genocide-20150701-0021.html
