indigenous people – Scott J. Pearson’s Book Review

Daughter of Fire: A Novel

By Scott J. Pearson | July 10, 2024July 10, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

Catalina is born into privilege as a daughter of the president of Guatemala about thirty years after the Spanish invasion. However, she does not fully embrace that identity since her late mother has native blood. Catalina’s promise to her dying mother was to preserve the Popol Vuh, a collection of native Mayan writings describing their spiritual conception of the world. Her father has ruled as a moderate who seeks peace between the native tribes and…

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States

By Scott J. Pearson | July 23, 2022July 23, 2022 by Scott J. Pearson

American history, as traditionally taught, teaches of the US’s “manifest destiny” and of many ensuing conflicts with natives on the Western frontier. A few ugly scenarios are often mentioned, but systematic genocide, on the order of Hitler or Stalin, is not described. However, from the perspective of these indigenous peoples, that’s exactly what happened as the United States attempted to destroy their entire culture. It’s this story from this perspective that Dunbar-Ortiz attempts to tell…