Structure

The book is structured in a generally chronological fashion, thereby giving the reader and easily comprehensible overview of Native American history and the history of the United States’ oppression of Native Americans. The book’s early chapters provide the reader with important historical background information, such as the rise of colonialist culture in Europe, and the defining characteristics of pre-colonial Native American civilizations. The book then focuses on early colonization efforts by Europeans in the Americas, followed by an overview of the U.S. aggression against Native Americans, both before and after the establishment of the U.S. as an independent country.

The book’s structure also emphasizes direct connections between these historical dynamics and recent/current sociopolitical phenomena. For example, the book examines how violence against natives is intertwined with a consistent emphasis on militarization and imperialism in American culture. These deleterious dynamics persist in modern...