Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America
Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America

Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America

SKU: 9781469664842
Author:
John Michael Witgen
Grade Levels:
College, University
Book Type:
Hardcover
Pages:
352
Publisher:
Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press
Copyright Date:
2022

Price:
$47.95

Description

Seeing Red Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America by Michael John Witgen, Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, is a deeply researched and passionately written work with enduring issues of equality, equity, and national belonging at its core. Against long odds, the Anishinaabeg resisted removal, retaining thousands of acres of their homeland in what is now Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Their success rested partly on their roles as sellers of natural resources and buyers of trade goods, which made them key players in the political economy of plunder that drove white settlement and U.S. development in the Old Northwest. But, as Michael Witgen demonstrates, the credit for Native persistence rested with the Anishinaabeg themselves. Outnumbering white settlers well into the nineteenth century, they leveraged their political savvy to advance a dual citizenship that enabled mixed-race tribal members to lay claim to a place in U.S. civil society. Telling the stories of mixed-race traders and missionaries, tribal leaders and territorial governors, Witgen challenges our assumptions about the inevitability of U.S. expansion.

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