Earlier this month, Beacon Press released a new graphic novel "interpretation" of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's best-selling 2015 history book, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States. Adapted by artist Paul Peart-Smith, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States: A Graphic Interpretation slims Dunbar-Ortiz's text down to its essentials, with visceral visuals illustrating the depths of beauty and horror throughout Indigenous American history that have so often been glossed over.
In many ways, Peart-Smith approaches this adaptation much like an oral history. He often uses literal talking heads to carry the narrative—often Dunbar-Ortiz herself, though also other historians including John Grenier, as well as indigenous writers such as Alejandro Murguia. It's a simple but helpful way to frame the story, anchoring the broader, descriptive prose with intensely personal perspectives—a means of editorializing while acknowledging the editorial voice, and establishing it as one of authority.
This is useful narrative tool, because True Believers in the covenant of American exceptionalism may very well struggle with some of the difficult truths and horrible atrocities contained within the pages of slim volume. I've also thought myself to be relatively well read on indigenous American history, but even I found myself surprised on more than one occasion.
The first chapter of the book, for example, focuses on the early agricultural history of indigenous Americans up through the lead-up to the American Revolutionary War—you know, those roughly 250 years between Columbus and the formation of the United States, which are largely glossed over in US history books. Indigenous Peoples' History shows just much transcontinental infrastructure had already been in place before the Europeans arrived, and how much deliberate sabotage went into the prevailing narrative that so many indigenous people just happened to passively succumb to whatever new germs the Europeans were carrying with them. (Dunbar-Ortiz and Peart-Smith hit hard on the role of alcohol as an intentional weapon of submission, too.)
This sort of re-framing helps to contextualize things like the American Revolutionary War in new ways. The creators here draw direct lines from England's colonial occupation of Ireland, which was largely seeded with Ulster Scots families that the English didn't want anyway, to the continuing theft of indigenous American land—largely at the hands of Ulster Scots families who had since left for North American, in hopes of opportunity. I remember learning in school that many indigenous tribes had sided with the British during the Revolution, but this book makes clear why: simply put, an absent landlord over the ocean is much preferred to a brand new neighbor who keeps building on your property.
There are plenty of other haunting parallels in the book is well, from the connections between slave state greed and the Western spread of the United States, and the abundant treaties and other legal agreements that the US simply refused to uphold. And that includes the continued struggles of many these tribes today—struggles which also carry direct connections to Standing Rock, to the American Indian Movement, to the expansion of slavery and the Trail of Tears, to American independence, to Scots-Irish colonization tactics. Dunbar-Ortiz and Peart-Smith deftly show how easy it was to both create and exploit class tensions among indigenous communities in order to establish stronger American footholds—a story that is sadly all too familiar in countless other contexts.
Peart-Smith puts in a lot of effort to differentiate between indigenous communities throughout the book , and his detailed illustrations really help to ground the most shocking moments. Like many history books, much of the prose in Indigenous Peoples' History is presented as omniscient summary, but the artwork goes a long way to fill in the gaps of detail and specificity and turn it into something personal.
Really, this book should be a required part of middle school curriculums.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States: A Graphic Interpretation [Paul Peart-Smith / Beacon Press]