Booknook

Title: The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History
Author: Ned Blackhawk
Genre: History

On yesterday’s commute home I concluded The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History by Ned Blackhawk. This is a history novel which focuses on the relationship between Native Americans and the United States, from the initial colonization efforts of Europeans to modern day.

I think the thing this book does best, and I think what it was trying to do, is make indigenous Americans active participants in history. Everyone knows that they were victims of countless atrocities, first at the hand of European invaders and later by the United States government, but they are often reduced to the role of passive victim: people to whom things simply happened. Not so, says Blackhawk. Native Americans were shapers of history as much as anyone else, and he brings their role and influence to the forefront here.

One of the things this pushes back on hard is the idea of inevitability: that what happened to the indigenous people of North America was always going to happen. We can see, throughout this book, so many moments when things could have been different if the right people had chosen differently.

It also is very revealing as to the sources of anti-indigenous violence in the decades before and after the American Revolution. It was in many cases, the settlers who were pushing hardest for violence and dispossession of the native peoples, not the government. Of course, the government agreed in the end, but both the British and later the American government initially wanted more diplomatic relationships with Native American tribes—but the settlers, fueled by bigotry, greed, and fear, lobbied hard for a more severe approach, and in the end, they won.

It’s also an incredibly detailed chronicle of native resistance to colonization and how hard Native Americans have fought for centuries to preserve their cultures and be allowed to simply exist as they wish. The breadth and variety of techniques they have employed to this end are truly remarkable. Knowing more about the modern legal struggles of the tribes is also a useful tool for looking at where to go next.

Some reviews found the book dry; personally, I can’t disagree that it was dry, but I did not find its dryness a problem. It is a historical chronicle, not a novel, and it does its job very well. It is well-researched and a thorough survey. I think it does well balancing covering a large swath of history with many different peoples and conflicts while also digging in a bit to certain specifics. I found it deeply engaging and I think the country would be better off if everyone had a better understanding of this material.

My only complaint is that it does end a little abruptly, but it had to stop somewhere.

It seems timely to read about America’s past experience with unjust detention of people based on perceived threats to national security, so last night I finished Together in Manzanar by Tracy Slater, a true story about one of the families in a Japanese internment camp during WWII. The situation of the Yonedas was somewhat unusual as they were a mixed-race family—Karl Yoneda was a Japanese-American citizen and his wife Elaine was white and Jewish.

The Yonedas make for a very interesting case study in what happened in the camps because a) their mixed-race family status (including their 3-year-old son, Tommy) made it clear how little the American military had really thought about this plan, given how thrown-off they were by the mere existence of mixed-raced families; and b) Karl and Elaine had been vocal social activists well before they were imprisoned in the Manzanar camp, speaking up for labor rights, racial justice, and participating in Communist advocacy. They had the language, tools, and knowledge to speak up and speak out, and they did.

Slater has done her research and provides a thorough list of sources at the end of the book, which include interviews with the Yonedas’ grandchildren as well as their own diaries and news clippings.

Together in Manzanar provides an in-depth look at the politics within the Japanese-American community at this time, both leading up to the camps and within. It ably tackles the question of “Why did they go? Why wasn’t there resistance?” (There was.) For the Yonedas in particular, the importance of an Axis defeat was difficult to overstate: as horror stories of German atrocities in Europe began to trickle out, they knew that a German or Japanese take-over of the United States would almost undoubtedly lead to Elaine and their son Tommy going into a death camp.

It provides a three-dimensional look at the discussions on the ground at the time, as well as following up with details from interviews Karl and Elaine gave many years later reflecting back on their statements and advocacy at the time.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the writing style, but this is one of those books you read for content, not style. It jumps around from perspectives in a way that’s occasionally confusing, but I also appreciated getting some more background information on some of those in the camp who opposed the Yonedas’ view on cooperating with the US government. Slater does a good job showing how each person highlighted got to their perspective and why the tension both within the camps and in the world generally at the time put everyone so on edge.

The book is also helpful for reminding us of the names of the hateful racists (architect Karl Bendetsen) who propagated this plan and then later tried to lie about why it was implemented or how bad it was. It’s also a useful reminder that when these people were released, they didn’t get to just waltz back into the lives they had been living before being imprisoned. Many of them were forcibly resettled further into the US, away from the coastal cities where they had lived, and forced to restart their lives from scratch, away from their communities and businesses.

It just seemed like a particularly relevant time to remember this.