An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States (REVISIONING HISTORY) by Kyle T. Mays

An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States (REVISIONING HISTORY) Reviews

• 
  Mara

  This was a super thought provoking look at the history of Black Americans, Indigenous Americans, and Afro Indigenous Americans, with an emphasis on their interrelations, rather than centering each group's relationship to the white over caste. A lot to consider here and while pretty academic, clearly an attempt has been made to make the discussion accessible for a lay audience
• 
  Richard Derus

  I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
  
  My Review: What a great idea for Beacon Press to do this series, ReVisioning History. Selecting creators for the almost infinite numbers of topics available to expand our existing explanations of US History must be a nightmare. Author Mays is a scholar of Popular Culture (Hip Hop Beats, Indigenous Rhymes: Modernity and Hip Hop in Indigenous North America, SUNY Press 2018), African American culture, Indigenous culture...among other things...working out of UCLA. In this book, he makes very plain the roots of racism in capitalist profit-seeking, and highlights the Indigenous dispossessions as another facet of capitalist settler colonialism's project to entrench white supremacy.
  
  So is this something to give your sugar dumplin' for a romantic read-along? Probably not. Is it something to give your sugar dumplin'? Yes. We're well past the stage of needing any help "feeling comfortable" my fellow white folk. The need now is for us to get with the program of what needs to come next. The subject this book has in its sights is how we got where we are, what where we are means, and how to move forward in a positive and inclusive direction.
  
  In the time of #BlackLivesMatter, I'm not sure I see a way forward that isn't plagued by violence. I'm not at all eager to find out I'm correct, of course. What I suggest to all reading this is, go get the book and see what got us here before opining upon the ways we should or should not proceed. Believe me when I tell you that the way you think we got here is, in fact, not that whole story and to effectively influence the course of future events you'd best be fully au fait with the full spectrum of facts.
  
  The toughest part of the read for me was the simultaneous sense that the author's boiling mad and icy furious, and reaches for the facetious blade in those circumstances. While it's not unjustified, the overall more controlled, academic prose suddenly breaking out in snark is jarring (eg, an early use of the pejorative "hotepness" made me wonder where this was going to recrudesce).
  

  Guns aren't the only weapon of choice for police officers. We must ask this question: Where do police officers learn the techniques that lead to the violent brutalization and death of Black, Indigenous, and Latinx peoples? The martial arts community. When we see a police officer mounting a Black person and controlling their wrists and legs, holding them in a chokhold, putting their knee on someone's neck, you know where they learned that from? A martial artist. They learn chokeholds from Brazilian jujitsu experts. ... In this regard, we also have to hold the martial arts community accountable. ... I've been to at least a few gyms in my life and always see someone who has all the signs of a white supremacist. Don't train them. I understand you have bills to pay and deserve to be paid for your labor, but you are actively teaching people who commit violence against Black and Indigenous people. If you want to help someone, actively recruit and train the people who are suffering from police violence in order that they can defend themselves.

  
  The end does not support the beginning. "I understand you have bills to pay" is pretty snotty...if I, over-sixty white guy, said it to the author, he'd be incandescent with rage...and there's absolutely no recognition that the end of the clause does not contain any sort of mechanism for the beginning to be dealt with.
  
  Anyway, while there's a lot to address in the world, there's also a lot to address in this book. It makes for a good read because perspective changes are urgently needed all around, and there's no bad place to start working toward a new, more flexible way of framing your personal conversation with it.
• 
  laurel [the suspected bibliophile]

  A fascinating and nuanced look at intersectional Afro-Indigenous history within the United States, which clearly shows that history is not a monolith. It was good, and I highly recommend it.
• 
  nic

  This was just as informative and thought-provoking and well thought out as I'd hoped.
  
  The experiences of indigenous folks both here and globally is a big blind spot of mine, especially as it relates to Afro-Indigenous relations, so I was excited to see a book that explicitly addressed that topic. My absolute favorite thing about this was that Mays embraces the messiness that comes with discussing oppressed groups with such deep traumas and histories in this country. For example, I appreciated how he critiqued both Black and Indigenous activists for perpetuating harm against each other's communities and how he continuously questioned the place of Indigenous populations in ideas around reparations and land ownership for Black folks. Within these complex and touchy topics, he moved with a lot of nuance and care for both his Black and Indigenous roots. So well done. Also, while this was clearly academic in nature, the actual language was accessible, which I appreciated.
  
  I definitely need to read more nonfiction centering indigenous voices, but this was a great start!
• 
  Reilly Tifft

  Rounded up from 2.5. This was disappointing. I was excited to read it, but I was consistently let down by the inconsistency of the analysis (big and often unsubstantiated leaps in logic) and by the seeming lack of editing (from the simple—using “except” instead of “accept”—to numerous instances of sentences that lacked clarity and lots of passive voice). There’s a good argument in here about both Afro-Indigenous history and Afro-Indigenous futures, but it was really difficult to get through because of the writing. It also often felt like the audience was unclear. This was written with a lot of assumptions about the historical knowledge of the reader but with evidence marshaled to appeal to a less knowledgeable audience (or so it seemed). I was also disappointed in the lack of citations for consequential claims. It wasn’t rampant but it was noticeable. I wanted to like this a lot more than I did.
• 
  Cynthia

  The arguments made here are extremely important! The first third of the book is excellent for beginners who want to know more and the citations offer a great place for further investigation. More advanced readers will find the first third a bit superficial but I think will love the analysis of the 1960s and 70s. For that analysis alone I think the books is very worth it.
• 
  Ron

  Gave this book a 4-star (8/10). It kept me interested from beginning to end. Without spoilers, I liked how it went into the history of the two cultures both in terms of individualism as well as how they merged.
  
  I'm always trying to find books that relate to themes other than black and white history. Nothing against those, it's just that's pretty much what you hear about in history. It was refreshing when I came across one that focused on black and Natives.
• 
  JRT

  This is a book about visions of the collective liberation of Black and Native American people in the United States. It discusses how the struggle for various iterations of Black liberation in North America can be fused with the struggle for Indigenous sovereignty. The term “Afro-Indigenous” refers to both individuals of mixed African American and Native American ancestry, as well as the intersecting nature of Africans and Indians in the United States. Author Kyle Mays seeks to explode the myths concerning Afro-Indigenous history.
  
  Mays traces how the United States’ founding documents and “fathers” joined African and Indigenous Americans together in an parallel and interconnected oppression that formed the basis for the American “democratic” project. This joining together—via African enslavement and Native dispossession—created opportunities for natural solidarity among the oppressed, as well as contradictions. I appreciated the way Mays grounded “Indigeneity” as not just a Native American thing, but also an African thing, as African Americans are direct descendants of Indigenous Africans who were displaced (as well as their kin who weren’t displaced). This makes African Americans Indigenous peoples, creating a commonality between them and American Indians. Nevertheless, Mays depicts the many contradictions between Black liberation and Indigenous sovereignty by exposing Black folks’ unwitting gravitation toward racist American mythology regarding Indigenous “disappearance,” and by highlighting the pervasive anti-Blackness that exists in Native American communities.
  
  While many of Mays’ critiques concerning Native anti-Blackness and Black anti-Indigeneity are legitimate, I thought some were either vague or off the mark—specifically with regard to his evaluation of Malcolm X and the Republic of New Afrika (RNA). For example, I’m not sure what is “masculinist” about Malcolm’s pursuit of collective Black land ownership (Mays doesn’t really explain), nor am I sure why Mays claims the RNA’s nationalist agenda in the Southern “Black Belt” erases superseding Indigenous claims to the land, when Chokwe Lumumba (one of the leaders of the RNA) made clear that New Afrikan claims to the land was subordinate to the Native claim. Mays could have provided a more holistic critique of the Black nationalist agenda in America, instead of just dismissing it as “Indigenous erasure.” Further, while Mays critiques Malcolm and the RNA for supposedly erasing the “agency” Natives had when dealing with the white settlers who ultimately stole their land, he does not explain the relationship between this Native agency and the ultimate (and ongoing) genocide of Native people. Obviously the Natives did not genocide themselves. So what does “agency” look like when a group of people are being violently dispossessed? Mays doesn’t really address this.
  
  Finally, I could have done without the cultural commentary, as I thought it took away from the otherwise historical grounding of the topic. Nevertheless, this book was an honest attempt at detailing the historical relationship between African Americans and Native Americans, and deserves to be read as such.
• 
  Joseph Montuori

  An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States is “the first intersectional history” of Black and Indigenous peoples in the United States. For that reason alone, it should be widely read. And there are other reasons that make it a worthy read too.
  
  One of the newest editions to Beacon’s ReVisioning History series, Mays book joins other ground-breaking works such as Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous People’s History of the United States. (There is also a ReVisioning History Series for Young People with some of the same and additional titles.) Mays is himself, of Afro-Indigenous heritage, adding weight and credibility to his ideas and conclusions.
  
  Much of the book focuses on the unique position of Afro-Indigenous Americans, and the unique and different types of oppression suffered by Black Americans on the one hand, and Indigenous Americans on the other. Obviously, enslavement and settler colonialism are major topics.
  
  Beyond that, Mays also carefully analyzes the interactions and dynamics between Afro and Indigenous groups throughout our history. This alone made the book worthwhile reading. If you think that the enslaving of Blacks by the Five Civilized Tribes is the only intersectional issue, think again. There are incidents and issues of oppression by both sides against one another. And of course, Mays is clear that these must be constantly viewed and analyzed within the original and overbearing oppression of white, Euro-Americans against both groups, who were most often played off against one another in our racial capitalist system.
  
  Obviously, this reality becomes even more complicated for those Americans straddling both segments of our society! Mays is himself, a living, breathing example of this intersection, and his personal experiences are another feature that makes this book illuminating and worthwhile.
  
  Having said this, I confess that this was for me, at times, a difficult read. Mays’s writing shifts between academic and personal-conversational styles throughout the book. At times that provided a pleasant change, and at times a challenging adjustment for me as the reader. I was also personally challenged to understand his meaning at times, and while I generally embrace that as a positive consequence of learning something new and difficult to grasp, I found myself losing patience. Personally, I found the last several chapters, conclusion and postscript especially enlightening.
  
  In the end, however, An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States was worth my effort. As mentioned above, Mays’s book is an informative and challenging read on a historical and contemporary topic that is unique and tremendously important to our society.
• 
  Nostalgia Reader

  3.5 stars.
  
  A unique and immensely needed discourse on the inter-relationship between the Native American and African American/Black/Indigenous African fights for justice and equality in the US. Although Mays doesn't really provide solutions to many of the abrupt changes he wants to see made towards equality, he does an excellent job providing multitudes of historical evidence showing that solidarity between these two groups is vital for obtaining equality on both sides.
  
  *I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway.
• 
  Carolyn

  I thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States. This is well-researched and well-explained. While it's right up my alley personally, I think this would also be accessible to the general public who are just interested in what their history teachers and professors left out. The language wasn't too esoteric nor were the chapters long or weighed down with a ton of sourcing.
  
  This is predominantly about African and African-American people and Indigenous people and how at times their communities have worked together or apart to strive for racial equality and freedom. Sometimes they've worked to tear one another down in an attempt to lever themselves higher. Whether dispossessed of freedom or dispossessed of homelands, both parties have grievances with the American government and its people.
  
  The organization and focus of this was more weighted on seventeenth- to nineteenth-century American history, there were some fruitful arguments made about more contemporary American history. I really enjoyed this discussion of the 1960s/1970s Black Panther Party and AIM movements as racial justice co-ops who were unwilling to accept the status quos that had been in place for the previous couple centuries. Especially the portion on Fred Hampton and his role in the Rainbow Coalition and how mutual aid and solidarity among BIPOC has always frightened white supremacists and been a significant threat to this capitalist nightmare.
  It hasn't all been solidarity though. This aptly points out that many African and African-American activists, abolitionists, and thinkers have used the oppression of Indigenous peoples as a stepping stone to climb higher up the chain of command, sometimes heaping on "savage" stereotypes to make their cause seem more appealing. Conversely, some Indigenous organizations and individuals have disregarded the lack of autonomy for African people brought to the Americas nor their chronic, systemic disadvantaging by the American government since the early seventeenth-century. People who were brought to America to be enslaved are not settlers. They were Indigenous peoples of sovereign African nations who were kidnapped and forcibly moved to the United States to be used up like livestock for economic purposes. So much nuance to this discussion and Kyle Mills was the right person to do it.
  
  I wanted more about the history and experiences of mixed-race people of both Black/African and Indigenous heritage. The unique intersection of individuals who have both ancestors from the Americas and Africa and how that particular perspective of race, land, and history is different. Perhaps it was just me misunderstanding the specific use of the term "Afro-Indigenous" in the title, but I initially interpreted and expected this to be a history of culturally and racially mixed people in the USA, people who are both African/-American and Indigenous. It's really about two groups seen as monoliths and how they survived and resisted alongside one another in allyship and sometimes at odds with each other.
  
  Highly recommend to all fans of American history, anti-racist writings, and socio-political resistance work.
  
  
  Content warnings: discussions of kidnapping and enslavement of Africans, white supremacy, anti-Black racism, anti-Indigenous racism, sexism, mention of racial slurs and racist imagery/stereotyping.
• 
  Bookworm

  Seemed like a fitting read with Native American Heritage Month, Thanksgiving and Native American Heritage Day it felt like a fitting and timely read. This is a what it says in the title: a history of the United States, from the experiences of Black and Native American peoples. From pre-colonial times and forward, Mays looks through the the struggles and fights, sometimes together, sometimes not of both peoples.
  
  So much of the history of the United States is through the eyes of, well, other people. Usually white and usually male. A book like this is useful for giving the reader a history that is likely not told and not learned or taught except perhaps in snippets or if you take a class or specially seek out this information, etc.
  
  There's a lot of information here, much that I didn't know, some that I knew from other sources. Overall, this is a book that is probably best read within the context for a class. It's fairly academic and honestly I found it really tough to get through. Mays is a professor at UCLA, which may explain that.
  
  It wasn't for me. Which is not to say this book does not have value, just that it wasn't a book that worked for me. But if you're a scholar, a student specifically researching this topic, a teacher looking to expand their horizons regarding this history, etc. this might be a book for you. I borrowed this from the library and would recommend you check it out that way before deciding if it's for you.
  
  
• 
  jo

  a really helpful intervention in the dominant conversations surrounding black/indigenous relations & futures which tend to focus on comparing/contrasting and ultimately minimizing shared struggle.
  
  because there are not a lot of recorded? reported? examples of black/indigenous histories together, a lot of the book relies on the author weaving connections together. sometimes this feels really illuminating and other times, it feels a little disjointed. some sections are only a paragraph long while others are pages long. this makes me question why some sections were included and sometimes it can feel like information overload.
  
  i found the sections focusing on the histories of black & indigenous peoples in the early years of american empire to be most helpful, along with the chapter on black & indigenous futures (especially the section on reparations).
  
  overall, i found this to be a really helpful way to critique & weave together ideas about what a collective future & liberation might look like.
  
  i gotta admit i read this at the beginning of the school year so it took me forever to finish which could have impacted my reading/engagement, but this is definitely a text that i'll revisit and teach from.
• 
  Eduardo Santiago

  An intriguing premise that unfortunately didn’t deliver (for me). Too many underdeveloped threads, too disjointed overall. It wasn’t clear who his audience is: mostly scholarly in tone and content, but his authorial snark and jargon (“dope”, “stan”) feel out of place. His sportsball and pop-culture chapters make little sense to those of us immune to those vices -- I ended up just skipping whole sections because I had no idea who any of those people are, or (more importantly) what their cultural/ethnic identity is: paragraphs about Famous-So-And-So doing such-or-such a cultural appropriation make no sense if I don’t know whether So-And-So is Black, Indian, White, Other.
  
  The early U.S. history chapters were the best: informative, thoughtful (Mays is a genuinely moral person who cares about nuance and complexity). Enough to bump 3.2 stars to 4. I’m glad to have read much of it, just not all of it, if that makes sense.
• 
  Yitazba Largo-Anderson

  I appreciate that this book brings to light a widely forgotten topic: the relationship between Black and Indigenous peoples and those who are both Black and Indigenous. The author brings perspective on anti-Blackness in Indigneous communities, and how we can best come together. I like that he asks us to look at the term Indigenous as one that also extends to Black people, because they too come from an Indigenous culture. I also appreciated Professor Mays critiquing treaties and that instead of trying to focus on establishing our soveriengty with an opposing force that will not work with our tribes and grant us our rightful sovereignty, we instead make treaties with fellow BIPOC communties. Very insightful read! We need more books that also speak to the spectrum of Black and Indigenous identity.
• 
  Anthony

  An interesting book and topic that explores and reveals a history within a history that reaches outside the lines of what is considered an ignored and overlooked part of not only U.S. History, but global history. Dr. Mays tackles the subject of the blend of the Afro-Indigenous people and their often forgotten existence. This must read for the inquiring mind will challenge the reader to take another look at how two seemingly different groups of people are intertwined deep in roots of the past, present and future.
• 
  Jennifer

  There is a lot of information here, though I feel like most of it didn't stick in my brain because I require a better scaffolding to for the knowledge. This is a challenging endeavor for the author because it requires covering Black, indigenous, and Afro-indigenous history simultaneously, comparing and contrasting movements, as well as diverse perspectives and calls to action. This is a good starting point for reminding ourselves of the necessity of solidarity amongst groups, and the building of a new world in order to approach true freedom.
• 
  Stephanie

  I have been meaning to read all these Beacon Press history books for a while now, and after this one I am actively looking out for the rest of the series. I've tried to make a more concerted effort to read Black and Indigenous authors but I'd never seen them together on purpose. This reads like a dissertation, but it has tons of good info, especially the analysis at the beginning and end.
• 
  Lynn

  Some really Great History Here
  
  This book contains some great history that isn’t always covered and is known about. I especially appreciated the information on Tecumseh and his fight against losing Native American land.
• 
  Annis

  I hadn't thought about Afro-Indigenous persons and their plight before listening to this book. Many references sent me to look up historical events and people I'd heard nothing about in all my years. Definitely worth listening to or reading.
• 
  Kim Bongiorno

  Fantastic read with details and perspectives I hadn't yet heard with such honesty in order to educate and get the wheels turning. Highly recommend.
• 
  Relena_reads

  Illuminating, but definitely not an intro-level book to either Black or Indigenous US history. Come to this book with some prior knowledge and it will reward your endeavors
• 
  Ethan Brown

  *3.5*
  
  I think this is a solid foundational book that breaks ground by truly attempting to grapple with the complex and nuanced histories surrounding Native American dispossession and genocide, as well as slavery in America. However, for all the good he strives to do, Kyle Mays's efforts are often hindered by his borderline immaturity when it comes to dealing with the issues he presents. He puts certain groups of people on pedestals, and completely ignores the actions and agencies of others—crafting sweeping generalizations and performing at times monumental leaps in logic to reinforce or dismiss points of conflict.
  
  This work serves as an effective introduction to the topics presented, but if you are looking for more nuanced, and arguably more mature, dives into the matters he covers, you may be better off skipping to the endnotes and reading the materials he cites.
• 
  April Dickinson

  REQUIRED READING. Critical and nuanced, funny and serious. I love the infusion of regular ass language and swearing. Makes strong and impassioned calls for abolition; reckoning with land theft, erasure, and enslavement; and building a new world beyond capitalism that honors all life.
• 
  Cindy Leighton

  "The introduction of Africans as exploited people on Indigenous land set the stage for the exponential gowth of capitalism. . . the foundations of the United States, its current power and weatlh, were built on enslaved African labor and expropriation of Indigenous land."
  Harsh reality but one we have to address. The United States could not have become the capitalistic powerhouse that it did without enslaving indigenous persons both from the Americas and then later from Africa - and without taking land from people who already lived in the Americas. When 95% of all the persons who live in the Americas die within 100 years of first contact, it doesn't really take much power to take over the land, but it does take some - as those who remained fought hard and continue to fight hard to maintain their sovereignty. Because they are still here.
  This is not an easy. book to read. But that doesn't mean we should just ignore this history. The US does owe a great debt to the men and women who sacrificed so much - sometimes willingly. Native Americans, for example, were the population that "served the most per capita in the armed services in WWII." Both groups have a long history of serving disproportionately in a military to fight for a country that has not always fought for them.
  Mays, Afro-Indigenous himself (Saginaw-Chippewa), spends much of the book talking about the interaction throughout US history of Black and Native Americans. Yes some Cherokee joined the Europeans in enslaving Africans, and this has caused some long term resentment. There were just as many Tribal Nations particularly in the Southeast that housed fleeing enslaved persons - and thus there is a long history of intermarriage. During the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s and 70s many Tribal Nations supported the Black Power movements - and then also learned from them, using civil disobedience to make their own demands for tribal sovereignty and to honor the treaties.
  This is not an "easy solutions" book - it is revolutionary. Mays is a UCLA professor who has been studying these issues for his whole life - he realizes the complexities -it's harder even than reparations. Tribal sovereignty is a start but "What if capitalism is the problem?" "We cannot get rid of racism without also uprooting its capitalist base. The modern capitalist system is based upon the exploitation of Black and Brown people around the globe." It is difficult to talk about reparations, 40 acres and a mule - making things right to formerly enslaved persons, when we are al living on commodified and stolen land. How do you give away land you stole in the first place? How does that make anything better?
  He does end with nine steps we can take now - for example recognizing that indigenous persons were also enslaved; having The Five Tribes (formerly the Five Civilized Tribes) recognize the Black Lives Matter movement and discuss more completely the history of enslavement. We can start with small steps of knowledge and recognition and support - but real change is going to have to be revolutionary.
  
• 
  Dave Carroll

  A noble attempt to blend painful and complicated histories
  
  There is much in a book such as #anafroindigenoushistoryoftheunitedstates by #kyletmays that I can't help but enjoy and appreciate. Based upon the scope of the bibliography and the extent of footnotes, Dr. Mays certainly extensively researched his subject and is expert in his field. His personal biography as both an African and Indigenous American gives him a perspective beyond mere academic as he has lived the history he promotes.
  
  The issue of race is one which most Americans do not feel comfortable discussing but, in a time of race based political strife, is most sorely needed. With the rise and validation of white supremacy during the last Administration used to stoke discontent and give a face and name to grievance, America's troubled racial history is one we can no longer afford to avoid as it feels like our democracy is at stake. The mutual history of African Americans and Indigenous Americans is also fraught with tension as history as we consider the shared tragedy of stolen people were forced across the sea to work stolen land of a people who had been mostly wiped out through an intentional genocide perpetrated by Europeans to steal two continents from tens of not hundreds of millions of people who had made a home in the Americas for thousands of years.
  
  Mays traces the efforts of early rights activists in both the African and Indigenous community to seek mutual society in the shadow of an a violent and overwhelming colonial culture. He proposes that, while originating in different continents, the fact that Africans were uprooted from their land and forced to work another land, they too share an indigenous identity that should compel both people to combine for mutual strength and betterment. Unfortunately, the fact that some Indigenous people enslaved African people in an effort to demonstrate "civilization" to the white power structure, add a layer of complexity that itself needs reconciliation. While I appreciate and agree with much of what Dr. Mayes is proposing and theorizing, I think that he too readily dismisses the advantage of cultivating white allies rather than diminishing them to liberal caricatures. It is these allies who were at the forefront of the abolition movement and, though misguided, well intentioned in their efforts to save indigenous peoples even if it came at the price of language and culture. I will study this more in the future and appreciate the overall thesis.
  #indigenousamericanhistory #africanamericanhistory #americanhistory