Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Reading this book is not a pleasant experience. But it is a good experience. So many horrific wrongs committed in the past have been proclaimed as heavenly goods; and those of us alive today, as the unwitting inheritors of these distortions, build our homes on top of them, not realizing that the lush green grass beneath our feet just barely covers highly toxic waste only inches below. Then we wonder why we suffer from untold dis-eases. It is not pleasant to discover that we have been living on top of a toxic dump; but it is very good to be alerted to that fact. Only then can we begin to clean up the mess. And we must clean up the mess. So while some may dismiss this book, saying, “That’s all ancient history now. It’s not like we can undo the past and give Native Americans their land back. Let’s just move on” - as if to say that this book’s topic is not relevant to our lives in the present - the truth is that this book can be approached as a catalog of the hidden, toxic lies that the dominant culture continues to tell itself, right up until the present moment and that are built into our current lives without our being aware of them. As such, this book is of great and immediate value to every one of us, right now. In summary, Dunbar-Ortiz shows how European-Americans have continually reframed Native Americans’ role in our national myth-narrative - always with the purpose of maintaining the basic structure of that narrative. That myth-narrative, as she describes it, is the laughable notion of liberty-through-empire - the idea that it is America’s divinely appointed duty to violently impose free-market capitalism on the rest of the world’s peoples in order to lift them up and liberate them (even though only a relative few ever do well in this system). So, for example, we started off, in the 1700’s-1800’s blatantly framing Native Americans as sub-human enemies of God’s blessed nation and as obstacles to our Manifest Destiny. Then, we retroactively reframed them as virtually nonexistent - as if the pilgrims had arrived in a virgin New World. We then went on to frame them as helpless victims needing us to rescue them; as having been eliminated mainly by diseases; as having been equal belligerents in a “fair fight” who simply happened to come out the losers; and finally, as one of many valuable contributors and welcome citizens (right along with all other ethnic immigrant groups) to our “great society.” None of these narratives is true, however. The truth is simply that Native Americans composed many nations who became colonized peoples struggling to preserve their integrity and sovereignty against uniquely vicious invaders who, perversely driven by greed, used the most grotesque, dishonorable tactics of total, scorched-earth war in an attempt to exterminate them. Each lie we made up to hide this simple truth served to make us feel good about taking indigenous peoples’ lands away from them. No matter which of these stories we told ourselves, the result was the same: America fulfilled her Manifest Destiny and became what we were always “intended” to become according to God’s divine plan, as His special, chosen people. The thing is, these are not just lies told in the past about Native Americans. As the unwitting inheritors of that past, we continue to tell ourselves these exact same lies in countless situations today. We tell ourselves that certain peoples are sub-human, or are our enemies when they are not. We tell ourselves that people we victimize are “equal players” and are equally culpable. We tell ourselves that the wrongs we commit are justified by the fact that we are doing God’s work and fulfilling His plan or will. We treat people abusively and then say something nice to them, or give them trinkets, as if this cancels our guilt. We do this on the level of foreign policy, at the domestic/local level, and in our private lives and intimate relationships. We do this all the time. We do it to enrich ourselves at others’ expense and to ease our guilty consciences. Many continue to suffer and die because of these lies. But we do not see this clearly because we have hundreds of years of practice not seeing it. What this book demonstrates, really, is that our “heroic forefathers’” most significant legacy to us may be an amazing capacity for self-deception. And unless we are willing to re-examine our history, we will continue passing that legacy down to future generations. Since self-deception cannot but cause endless problems and suffering, this is a legacy we should seek to terminate ASAP. But the self-destructive habit of repeating these lies will remain ingrained in us until we can make those lies conscious to ourselves. There are so many wrongs that we have unknowingly inherited and that we unknowingly perpetuate. They must be righted. Every single one of them. For our own good, as well as for others’. But first, we have to be able even just to see them for what they are. Dunbar-Ortiz’s book allows us to take some crucial steps towards the worthwhile goal of “truth and rectification” (if not reconciliation). (My one criticism: I had hoped for a bit more description of how Indigenous peoples saw/see the world. We do not learn too much about their actual lives. This is fairly straightforward, somewhat dry, academic, western-style “this happened and then that happened” history. But as such, it’s excellent quality.)