Indians of the Americas

1984 · Book · Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz

Concerned with American Indian self-determination, this book proposes that international human rights and the international political system are the means whereby the political aspects of Indian self determination in the Americas – both North and South – must be achieved. The first half of the book deals with the legal and political status of Indian peoples, that is self determination and human rights in law and principle; the second half comprises two case studies, one on Indians in the United States, the other on the Miskitu nation in revolutionary Nicaragua. The author – herself both a professional historian and an American Indian activist – shows that what in the 1970’s became known as the new Indian wars – the growing attacks on Indians by repressive regimes, along with their dispossession as a result of the activities of transnational corporations – did not simply begin again in that decade but, along with Indian resistance , had never ceased since 1492. The distinguishing feature of the 1970’s was that Indians abandoned their defensive and purely local struggles, and took to the political offensive, this time on a world stage. No longer victims, they became fighters, allied with other indigenous peoples in a struggle for survival – aware that defeat would probably mean an end to Indian civilization in the Americas. by Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz