Columbus sailed west for money.
-- Author (Part 1)

Importance: This succinct statement does a lot of work. In five words, it rewrites America’s entire origin story. The old myth that Columbus sailed west to prove the Earth was round and in the process “discovered” America, willfully ignores the historical record. Columbus, and the other Europeans who colonized the Americas, did in an era when mercantilism, the forerunner to capitalism, was taking hold in Europe, leading monarchs and merchants to seek new sources of wealth. Overland trade routes with the East had been disrupted by political upheavals. The monarchies and growing merchant class looked across the ocean for alternative access to Eastern markets.

[T]he belief in tribal indigeneity is crucial to understanding modern Indian realities.
-- Author (Part 1)

Importance: Treuer helps us to see individual Native Americans through their own eyes and their own heritage, free of the explanations on offer from the dominant culture that pretends...