Just a note on Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's *An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States* which i recommend. Our Salt Lake reading group read it in 2015 shortly after it was published. I was disappointed that the history of settler-colonial 'removal' of Indian peoples in the Great Basin/"intermountain west" (directly and indirectly mainly by Mormon settlement) was not covered.
In January of 1863 Colonel Patrick Connor and 200+ U.S. cavalry from Ft. Douglas in Salt Lake City made a pre-dawn surprise attack on Shoshone winter campgrounds (along the Bear River) at the north end of the Cache Valley (where i lived fifteen of my twenty years between age ten and thirty). Connor's cavalry claimed a great victory saying they wiped out around 225 Indian 'warriors' and he was promoted to Major General. Local settlers said far more Indian men, women and children were killed; one said he counted 493 bodies afterward. In the latter 20th century the local historian (Brigham D. Madsen) who was initially responsible for making this "Bear River Massacre" more widely known estimated that about 250 were killed. Later in 2015 we were hosting a regional speaking tour for Leo Killsback (a Northern Cheyenne leader who was then teaching at Arizona State University). I shared my frustration that Dunbar-Ortiz hadn't mentioned the Bear River Massacre. Leo responded 'and the book doesn't cover the Indians' greatest victory over the European settler-colonialists.' That was when i began to learn about the 1791 defeat of U.S. Army General Arthur St. Clair and a thousand soldiers on the Wabash River in what is now Ohio. In the spring of 2018 Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz was speaking at a Salt Lake bookstore promoting her new book *Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment*. I stood in the book-signing line afterward with a new copy of *Massacre at Bear River: First, Worst, Forgotten* by Rod Miller (2008, Caxton Press, Idaho; the north end of Cache Valley which was in "Utah Territory" in 1863 eventually became part of the state of Idaho). I didn't refer to or criticize *An Indigenous Peoples' **History* i just gave her the book. I hope she has had a chance to read it. She has had a busy and productive lifetime fighting against the capitalist system. Dunbar-Ortiz has a new book coming out later this year, *Not "A Nation of Immigrants": Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion* (Beacon Press). On Tue, Mar 23, 2021 at 7:51 PM Louis Proyect <[email protected]> wrote: > (I've read the first two books mentioned below. This guarantees it will > be great. It starts on April 7th. If you don't have HBO, find a friend > that does.) > > The series is based on three books: Sven Lindqvist’s “Exterminate All > the Brutes,” Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of > the United States” and Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s “Silencing the Past.” > > > https://www.indiewire.com/2021/03/exterminate-all-the-brutes-trailer-hbo-raoul-peck-1234625435/ > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#7569): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/7569 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/81567667/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
