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THE STATE OF NATIVE AMERICA: GENOCIDE, COLONIZATION, AND RESISTANCE
by M. Annette Jaimes. South End Press, 116 St. Botolph Street,
Boston, MA 02115. Notes, index, index of Indian nations. 460
pp., $16.00 paper. 0-89608-424-8
REVIEW
One in a continuing South End Press series called "Race and
Resistance," this book is generally the work of several American
Indian professors and scholars of the Center for the Study of
Ethnicity and Race in America at the University of Colorado at
Boulder. Contributors include Vine Deloria, Jr., Ward Churchill,
Glenn T. Morris, M. Annette Jaimes, Jim Vander Wall, and Winona
LaDuke.
The publication of this book is appropriate for the 500th
anniversary of Columbus' navigational error that brought him to the
shores of North America, as it details Native American challenges
to the reasons for celebrating the event. It is time to acknowl-
edge, these writers say, their rights to "sovereignty, self-
determination, and self-sufficiency" that were lost as a direct
result of the accomplishment of what is officially called "Western
Civilization's highest expression of Freedom and Democracy."
The eighteen essays and table of laws and cases outline the
anguish experienced by every tribe in reaction to such injustices
as the expropriation of 95% of their original land base while being
made to suffer the highest poverty of any segment of the U.S.
population. While this goes on, most Americans remain oblivious or
believe that it is the tribes' fault for refusing to assimilate.
The book's goal is to create an understanding that this is part of
the governmental indoctrination process and that needed changes can
only be brought about by a fundamental "change of consciousness" by
the American public.
The book opens with an event that shows our need to understand
Native American's view of history. Whites show a lack of compas-
sion when they commemorate events that are tragedies to Indian
tribes. Three years ago, a building on the University of
Colorado's Boulder campus was renamed from that of an active
participant of the Sand Creek Massacre (Captain David Nichols) to
that of the victims, the Cheyenne and Arapaho.
The essays address the major issues that have shaped present
realities: treaty rights, the reservation system, self-determina-
tion, land disputes, water and fishing rights, uranium extraction
and dumping, religious freedom, the Leonard Peltier case, the role
of women in the indigenous resistance, American Indians in the
military, education (otherwise called subordination), modern Native
American art and literature development, and an especially painful
conclusion which says that Indian tribes are suffering from
theological, scientific, and ecological racism that can only be
alleviated by human compassion and alternative answers.
"The State of Native America" is disturbing, and it means to
be. It is also one of the most scholarly and coherent statements
yet to be produced on the injustices that we are perpetuating.
Many professors of classes on Native Americans will have a hard
decision whether to include this book as a text. The wise ones
will do so.