Eating Fire, Tasting Blood: An Anthology of the American Indian Holocaust
In the words of indigenous scholars, community activists, and artists, this unique collection of essays and poems presents the last 500 years of American history from the Indian viewpoint--not the "white-washed, academic-tainted, hypothetical . . . history" found in most textbooks. Paula Gunn Allen addresses the myth of the colonists coming to an empty continent, when in fact the acknowledged number of Native Americans at that time is 10 million and rising. Others elucidate the special problems confronted by indigenous women, from those who lost children to the smallpox brought by the initial waves of white settlers, to those marched to "removal reservations" in the 1830s, to incarcerated Native American women today who are denied the opportunity to practice their religious rites. Perhaps the most compelling essays are those chronicling the decimation of entire tribes, such as the Choctaws, dispossessed of their land through a series of 14 treaties, and the Powhatan and Monacan tribes of what is now Virginia. This substantial and meticulous collection supports all who are breaking the "great silence" surrounding the reality of American expansion.Deborah DonovanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved