1491

I braced myself for a somewhat limited perspective given this book is 20 years old and a mainstream hit, but even then I was disappointed. The author does a decent-enough job at describing in rich detail Indigenous American cultures and lives. However, he does little to place in social context the genocidal and forcefully destructive European "contact", glossing over historical anthropological accounts as "offensive by today's standards but socially acceptable at the time". He dances around the genocidal impact, never once calling it genocide by name, and taking great lengths to excuse the contact as primarily caused by disease inadvertently, with a only a footnote cautioning readers to not take his argument as support for white supremacist arguments of "genetic superiority" (following a long tradition of manipulating medical science to "accidentally" justify Euro-dominance). The author occasionally veers into the 20th explorer tropes of disgust, casually mentioning cannibalism intended to shock or anecdotes about remote towns having only octopus and liver to eat (sorry pal, they were messing with you!). And even when trying to give credence to the Haudenosaunee for originating ideals of US democracy, he whole-heartedly accepts the validity of the US-settler colony, with no acknowledgement to the full history. He appears to try to give full authority and ownership to Indigenous peoples, but ends up reframing a genocide as an unfortunate meeting of conflicting values, showing more sympathy and understanding for the extinction of American fauna and flora in 10 pages than he does for the Indigenous people and cultures whose destruction he so readily overlooks. Not to mention the shallow strawmen arguments he sets up throughout the book, pitting developers against environmentalists, with an undertone comparing Indigenous agroforestry to contemporary development. How he could present Meggers' horribly infantilizing view of Amazonia with NO context or appropriate rebuttal is incredible. I'll give him three stars for trying to present a more holistic view of Indigenous cultures in the Americas but overall, his biased perspective made it challenging to read without getting angry. The book may be useful if this is the first history of Indigenous America you've learned since US public school. Read "Dawn of Everything" by Graeber/Wengrow or "An Indigenous History of the US" by Dunbar-Ortiz instead.