Unpacks the twenty-one most common myths and misconceptions about Native Americans
Product Code: 8307
ISBN: 9780807062654
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published Date: 10/04/2016
Availability:In stock
N/A
Price: $16.00

“All the Real Indians Died Off” and 20 Other Myths About Native Americans critically deconstructs persistent myths about American Indians that have taken hold in the United States. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker tackle a wide range of myths about Native American culture (“Indians Are Naturally Predisposed to Alcoholism”) and history (“Columbus Discovered America”) and trace how they developed. They deftly show how these myths are rooted in the fears and prejudice of European settlers and in the larger political agendas of the settler state aimed at acquiring Indigenous land, and that they can be traced to narratives of erasure and disappearance.

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Authors’ Note
Introduction
MYTH 1: “All the Real Indians Died Off”
MYTH 2: “Indians Were the First Immigrants to the Western Hemisphere”
MYTH 3: “Columbus Discovered America”
MYTH 4: “Thanksgiving Proves the Indians Welcomed the Pilgrims”
MYTH 5: “Indians Were Savage and Warlike”
MYTH 6: “Indians Should Move On and Forget the Past”
MYTH 7: “Europeans Brought Civilization to the Backward Indians”
MYTH 8: “The United States Did Not Have a Policy of Genocide”
MYTH 9: “US Presidents Were Benevolent or at Least Fair-Minded Toward Indians”
MYTH 10: “The Only Real Indians Are Full-Bloods, and They Are Dying Off”
MYTH 11: “The United States Gave Indians Their Reservations”
MYTH 12: “Indians Are Wards of the State”
MYTH 13: “Sports Mascots Honor Native Americans”
MYTH 14: “Native American Culture Belongs to All Americans”
MYTH 15: “Most Indians Are on Government Welfare”
MYTH 16: “Indian Casinos Make Them All Rich”
MYTH 17: “Indians Are Anti-Science”
MYTH 18: “Indians Are Naturally Predisposed to Alcoholism”
MYTH 19: “What’s the Problem with Thinking of Indian Women as Princesses or Squaws?”
MYTH 20: “Native Americans Can’t Agree on What to Be Called”
MYTH 21: “Indians Are Victims and Deserve Our Sympathy”
Historical Time Line
Acknowledgments
Notes

“Dunbar-Ortiz and Gilio-Whitaker admirably aim to explode popular, damaging, and inherently limiting myths about Native Americans, continuing the work begun in Dunbar-Ortiz’s well-received An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States.”

—Publishers Weekly

“‘All the Real Indians Died Off’ And 20 Other Myths about Native Americans offers a much-needed and excellent introduction to American Indian history and contemporary life for a broad audience.”

—Against the Current

“I have been looking for a text for our Intro to Native American Studies course that touches on the themes of history, genocide, cultural appropriation, and legal relationship between the United States and indigenous people that would be comprehensible by freshmen. I have finally found it...I cannot wait to teach it.”

—Kerri J. Malloy, lecturer in the Department of Native American Studies at Humboldt State University
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