We are taking a journey through history with our October author, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, but not the white-washed, settler-focused history most of us were taught in school. October’s author is an Indigenous activist and writer whose goal is to share history from the perspective of Indigenous peoples.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz began her foray into activism in 1968 as the founder of a second-wave feminist organization called Cell 16, which was a women’s liberation movement that advocated its members “separate from men who are not consciously working for female liberation”. She began her work in the American Indian Movement (AIM) shortly after, and it has been her devotion to Indigenous people’s rights that has guided her activism in the decades since.
Her works mostly center on Indigenous rights in the United States, but in the 1980s, she traveled to Nicaragua frequently to assist the Miskito Indians in a land dispute with the government. This indigenous group ended up being collateral damage in the Contra war that the US had become involved in with the Sandinistas. She wrote two books about her experiences there, and the damage inflicted on the Miskitos that she witnessed. As a disturbing aside, the land rights of the Miskito Indians are still, to this day, being trampled on by settlers, mostly in the service to capitalism (a trend we see in the entire history of the United States as well).
She’s written some of the most respected texts on the United States and its treatment of Indigenous people, including An Indigenous People’s History of the United States and Not a Nation of Immigrants. She advocates for self-determination for Indigenous peoples, and for a more honest approach to this nation’s origin story. Her work shines a light on the fact that Indigenous history has been all but written out of our history books, and what is taught is often sanitized to within an inch of its life.
We used the cover of her book, Roots of Resistance, as our colorway inspiration (and its name). The book discusses the history of Indigenous land tenure in New Mexico, which has a convoluted settler history and many indigenous peoples who are still trying to retain autonomy and cultural connection to their native lands.
Books by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz:
- An Indigenous People’s History of the United States
- Not a Nation of Immigrants
- All the Real Indians Died Off and 20 Other Myths About Native Americans
- Roots of Resistance
- Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment
Want more like this? Here are some other authors we suggest you read/listen to:
- Malala Yousafzai
- Angela Y. Davis
- Gloria Steinem
- Rigoberta Menchú Tum
- Winona LaDuke
We hope you enjoy this HerStory Book Club as much as we have enjoyed putting it together. We envision an open-ended Book Club, with folks reading or listening to whichever book they’d like from each author’s If you’d like a spoiler of all of the authors we’ll be showcasing this year, check out our website: https://knittedwit.com/herstory-2022-authors/