
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States
by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Independence from Britain. Empire over everyone else.
For you if
you sense the founding story leaves something major out
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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.
Where This Book Lives
- Setting
- North America
- Voice
- Written by a North America author
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dir. Martin Scorsese
Murder for money, disguised as marriage.
In 1920s Oklahoma, oil wealth makes the Osage Nation targets of a systematic campaign of murder, exploitation, and legalized theft, carried out in part by white men who married into Osage families. Adapted from David Grann's book of the same name.
Why it’s here: Punk in centering Mollie Burkhart's interiority instead of turning her murder into a backdrop for a white antihero's guilt. Pedagogical in showing how legalized guardianship and "headrights" turned bureaucracy itself into a weapon against the Osage.
Same event, different angle
The same history — told by someone who saw it differently.
Same pattern, different era
Different time, different place. The same thing keeps happening.
Mean Spirit
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Oil under Osage land. White men with plans.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
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Westward expansion, told by the people it destroyed.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
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The richest people in America were being murdered. Nobody stopped it.
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The Secret River
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A convict settler. Aboriginal land. The choice he makes.
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