Summary

The book opens with a brief Author’s Note, in which Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz discusses her qualifications and motivations for writing this book. She has a PhD in history, and she has partial Native American heritage. She was raised in predominantly Native American communities. In the 1960s, she was active in various progressive movements. In the 1970s, she focused on Native American social issues. She has been a scholar and teacher of Native American history for decades. With this book, she hopes to make Native American history clear and accessible to the average reader, and to highlight the profound injustices of American history that are often ignored in American school curricula.

In the Introduction, the author articulates the basic thesis of the book: American history is largely defined by genocide and theft of land, and the ethos of these dynamics still define...