Book
We are the land : a history of Native California
Publication Information
Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2021]
Physical Description
xi, 358 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm
Summary
"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 policy-makers interested in a history that centers the native experience"--
Contents
- Introduction
- A people of the land, a land for the people : Yuma
- Beach encounters : indigenous people and the age of exploration, 1540-1769 : San Diego
- "Our country before the Fernandino arrived was a forest" : native towns and Spanish missions in colonial California, 1769-1810 : Rome
- Working the land : entrepreneurial Indians and the markets of power, 1811-1849 : Sacramento
- "The white man would spoil everything" : indigenous people and the California gold rush, 1846-1873 : Ukiah
- Working for land: rancherias, reservations, and labor, 1870-1904 : Ishi Wilderness
- Friends and enemies : reframing progress, and fighting for sovereignty, 1905-1928 : Riverside
- Becoming the Indians of California : reorganization and justice, 1928-1954 : Los Angeles
- Reoccupying California : resistance and reclaiming the land, 1953-1985 : Berkeley and the East Bay
- Returning to the land : sovereignty, self-determination and revitalization since
- Conclusion : returns