Struggle for the Land: Native North American Resistance to Genocide, Ecocide, and Colonization

I found this book to be very well put together and supported with mountains of evidence. Recently Mr Churhcill has come under fire from the right for some remarks he has made in the classroom. This does not surprise me since this book is a rather damning indictment of past american treatment of native americans. I was interested in this book for it's environmental implications since that is my field. Regardless, I found myself more and more interested in the humanitarian issues contained within as the book marched on. So, while I lack the socio-ethical background to provide any in depth critique of those issues, I will say that it is well put together, is interesting, and won my sympathy. All in all definately one of the better books I've read.

Long out of print, this new edition of Ward Churchill's Struggle For The Land: Native North American Resistance To Genocide, Ecocide And Colonization is an impressive and very highly recommended collection of fiery essays that will give the contemporary reader pause concerning the American government's systematic exploitation of the land and elimination of the Native American peoples who have inhabited it, and the bittersweet results of the Native American attempts to defend the land from defoliation, strip-mining, and other destructive depredation of the 19th and 20th centuries. An extensive detailed collection of essays chronicling such events as the Lakota struggle for the Black Hills, an acute perspective on the Navajo-Hopi land dispute, a stringent presentation of the American Indian diaspora, and more, make Struggle For The Land a core addition to community and academic Native American Studies collections.

Too bad that the bottom-line economics of publishing have let this searing account of Indigenous struggles over land and ecology go out of print. Because of its concentration on environmental and land-use issues, this is one of the author's most focused works, though they are all worthwhile. The documentation is thorough; the presentation is relentlessly didactic but always readable. No country that treats its indigenous people as the US always has can claim moral superiority over others. Cf. also Alvin Josephy, "Now That the Buffalo's Gone," a slightly older but still valuable book on many of the same issues. N.B. Many of Churchill's books reprint essays published elsewhere, so beware of overlap with the contents of several other titles by this committed scholar-activist.