Through poetry and prose, essays, photography, interviews, and polemical interventions, the contributors reflect on Indigenous history and politics and on the movement’s significance. Their work challenges our understanding of colonial history not simply as “lessons learned” but as essential guideposts for activism.

Going beyond the story of America as a country “discovered” by a few brave men in the “New World,” Indigenous human rights advocate Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz reveals the roles that settler colonialism and policies of American Indian genocide played in forming our national identity.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor  narrates this dramatic transformation in housing policy, its financial ramifications, and its influence on African Americans. She reveals that federal policy transformed the urban core into a new frontier of cynical extraction disguised as investment.