“A Native American rejoinder to Richard White and Jesse Amble
White’s California Exposures.”—Kirkus Reviews
Rewriting the
history of California as Indigenous.
Before there was
such a thing as “California,” there were the People and the Land.
Manifest Destiny, the Gold Rush, and settler colonial society drew
maps, displaced Indigenous People, and reshaped the land, but they
did not make California. Rather, the lives and legacies of the people
native to the land shaped the creation of California. We Are the
Land is the first and most comprehensive text of its kind,
centering the long history of California around the lives and
legacies of the Indigenous people who shaped it. Beginning with the
ethnogenesis of California Indians, We Are the Land recounts
the centrality of the Native presence from before European
colonization through statehood—paying particularly close attention
to the persistence and activism of California Indians in the late
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The book deftly
contextualizes the first encounters with Europeans, Spanish missions,
Mexican secularization, the devastation of the Gold Rush and
statehood, genocide, efforts to reclaim land, and the organization
and activism for sovereignty that built today’s casino economy. A
text designed to fill the glaring need for an accessible overview of
California Indian history, We Are the Land will be a core
resource in a variety of classroom settings, as well as for casual
readers and policymakers interested in a history that centers the
native experience.
