All the Real Indians Died Off and other myths

Native American Prof. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Dina Gilio-Whitaker, produced by Michael A. Kowaleski (Politics & Prose Bookstore); Xochitl, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly

MYTH 1: All the Real Indians Died Off

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker

While campaigns to abolish “Columbus Day” have become widespread (and making good progress in the City of Los Angeles), ridiculous perceptions of imperialist Europeans as “discoverers” of a “New World” persist.

Calling out these and other colonial myths, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, a longtime activist for indigenous peoples around the world, locates the origins of these persistent myths in white settlers’ political and territorial goals.
 

Showing how the acquisition of land and natural resources was predicated on erasing Native Americans, Prof. Dunbar-Ortiz continues the important work of her classic The Great Sioux Nation, which was the foundational text for the first International Conference on Indigenous Peoples of the Americas.

She also wrote the definitive and stunning historical text An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, winner of the 2015 American Book Award. Historian Howard Zinn (author of A People's History of the United States) asked her to write it after she noted that he had left all of the Native American stories out his grand American history book.

Prof. Dunbar-Ortiz is seen here in conversation with co-author Dina Gilio-Whitaker, an award-winning journalist and columnist at Indian Country Today Media Network.
 
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