New York Times Bestseller
Basis of the HBO docuseries Exterminate All the Brutes, written and directed by Raoul Peck
This American Book Award–winning title about Native American struggle and resistance radically reframes more than 400 years of US history
Unflinchingly honest about the brutality of this nation’s founding and its legacy of settler-colonialism and genocide, the impact of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s 2014 book is profound. The basis of the HBO docuseries Exterminate All the Brutes, directed by Raoul Peck, and a New York Times Bestseller, this classic is revisited with new material that takes an incisive look at the post-Obama era from the war in Afghanistan to Charlottesville’s white supremacy-fueled rallies, and from the onset of the pandemic to the election of President Biden. Writing from the perspective of the peoples displaced by Europeans and their white descendants, she centers Indigenous voices over the course of 4 centuries, tracing their perseverance against policies intended to obliterate them.
Today in the United States, there are more than 500 federally recognized Indigenous nations comprising nearly 3 million people, descendants of the 15 million Native people who once inhabited this land. The centuries-long genocidal program of the US settler-colonial regimen has largely been omitted from history. With a new foreword from Raoul Peck and a new introduction from Dunbar Ortiz, this classic bottom-up peoples’ history explodes the silences that have haunted our national narrative.
Big Concept Myths
- That America’s founding was a revolution against colonial powers in pursuit of freedom from tyranny
- That Native people were passive, didn’t resist and no longer exist
- That the US is a “nation of immigrants” as opposed to having a racist settler colonial history
“Meticulously documented, this thought-provoking treatise is sure to generate discussion.”
—Booklist
“Justice-seekers everywhere will celebrate Dunbar-Ortiz’s unflinching commitment to truth—a truth that places settler-colonialism and genocide exactly where they belong: as foundational to the existence of the United States.”
—Waziyatawin, PhD, activist and author of For Indigenous Minds Only
“An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States helped me clarify my place in this country. . . . This book is necessary reading if we are to move into a more humane future.”
—Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street
“[An] essential historical reference for all Americans.”
—Peterson Zah, former president of the Navajo Nation
“A must-read for anyone interested in the truth behind this nation’s founding.”
—Veronica E. Velarde Tiller, PhD, Jicarilla Apache author and publisher of Tiller’s Guide to Indian Country
“This may well be the most important US history book you will read in your lifetime. . . . Here, rendered in honest, often poetic words, is the story of those tracks and the people who survived—bloodied but unbowed. Spoiler alert: the colonial era is still here, and so are the Indians.”
—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams
“[P]ulls up the paving stones and lays bare the deep history of the United States . . . If the United States is a ‘crime scene,’ as she calls it, then Dunbar-Ortiz is its forensic scientist.”
—Vijay Prashad, author of The Poorer Nations
“Dunbar-Ortiz strips us of our forged innocence [and] shocks us into new awarenesses.”
—Bill Ayers, author of Public Enemy
“[A] fiercely honest, unwavering, and unprecedented statement.”
—Simon J. Ortiz, Regents Professor of English and American Indian Studies, Arizona State University
“[A] masterful story that relates what the Indigenous peoples of the United States have always maintained: against the settler US nation, Indigenous peoples have persevered against actions and policies intended to exterminate them, whether physically, mentally, or intellectually.”
—Jennifer Nez Denetdale, author of Reclaiming Diné History
Foreword to the Tenth-Anniversary Edition, by Raoul Peck
Introduction to the Tenth-Anniversary Edition
INTRODUCTION
This Land
ONE
Follow the Corn
TWO
Culture of Conquest
THREE
Cult of the Covenant
FOUR
Bloody Footprints
FIVE
The Birth of a Nation
SIX
The Last of the Mohicans and Andrew Jackson’s White Republic
SEVEN
Sea to Shining Sea
EIGHT
“Indian Country”
NINE
US Triumphalism and Peacetime Colonialism
TEN
Ghost Dance Prophecy: A Nation Is Coming
ELEVEN
The Doctrine of Discovery
CONCLUSION
The Future of the United States
Acknowledgments
Suggested Reading
More Suggested Readings
Notes
Works Cited
Index
About the Author