An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States

The standard story of American independence is about a break from colonial power. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz offers a different reading: American independence was the beginning of a colonial project, not the end of one, with the entire North American continent as its intended territory. Starting from 1776, she traces the machinery of westward expansion — the military campaigns, the treaties broken before the ink dried, the deliberate destruction of indigenous nations — as the direct consequence of what the Founders declared. An Indigenous Peoples' History doesn't argue that America was flawed. It argues that the project was always what it turned out to be.