Adapting Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s best-selling study Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States to a slimmer comics format while retaining its core essence is, of course, an achievement in itself. As is any effective graphic biography-style transition from one medium to another. Artist Paul Peart-Smith takes that source material and succeeds here in ensuring that original text is accessible to a wider audience, in a digestible but still comprehensive format.
Dunbar-Ortiz’s 2014 book examined the stories of those indigenous peoples displaced by European settler-colonialism, the policies of their white descendants, and the genocide that followed. In this comics version, Peart-Smith centres the author as an on-page narrator presence providing the reader with a direct visual link from author to subject matter.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States: A Graphic Interpretation is split into five main chapter headings. The first explores indigenous cultures, interactions and civilisations pre-colonialism, in the process reminding us of the lie of the term “the New World”. From there it looks at the origins of colonialism, white supremacy and its devastating consequences.
Later chapters visit the historical atrocities perpetrated on the indigenous peoples of what would become the United States, and the policies of ethnic cleansing that ensued. It’s horrifying reading, as it should be. The later section brings us into more contemporary times with reminders of the pop cultural vilification of Indians, the fight back from tribal groups, and a plea to remember non-indigenous responsibilities to acknowledge and attempt to makes amends for the horrors of the past.
This isn’t simply a story of oppression. It’s equally a history of resistance. Peart-Smith’s art adopts a loose realism that gives a moody intensity to the events portrayed while editor Paul Buhle ensures a coherent and accessible interpretation of the source. Our Broken Frontier resource lists for socially relevant work (including one for ‘Indigenous Peoples’) exist for multiple purposes but one of them is to aid librarians for collection development purposes. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States: A Graphic Interpretation should be on every library’s shelves. Now more than ever.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (W), Paul Peart-Smith (A). Paul Buhle with Dylan Davis (E) • Beacon Press, $22.95
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Review by Andy Oliver
