An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

I’m going to the nation,
Going to the territory.
Going to the nation, baby,
Going to the territory.
This was a common lyric in Indian territory, and it appears that Black,
Indigenous, and Afro-Indigenous peoples sang it. 3
In explaining this history, Ellison establishes for the reader how Black
and Indigenous folks came to a particular place. He also sheds light on the
contested terrain that defined the nineteenth-century Black and Indigenous
experience: removal and belonging. 4
This chapter’s epigraph was taken from W. E. B. Du Bois’s magnum
opus, Black Reconstruction in America (1935). In chapter 17, “The
Propaganda of History,” he writes about all of the revisionist history and
straight-up lies that white historians had written about Reconstruction,
especially the negative portrayal of Black Americans. Like most of us who
have ever read this book, I agree with Du Bois, and it is still perhaps
essential reading for understanding Reconstruction. However, Indigenous
dispossession is also a tragic part of this history. And while formerly
enslaved Africans became citizens (albeit second-class ones), Indigenous
peoples don’t necessarily have this narrative. They continued to be
dispossessed of their land and were written about as if they disappeared.
Historians often focus on all the changes and developments in the
nineteenth century and conclude that, taken together, all of them worked to
steer the country toward equality and justice, but that is way too rosy of a
picture, especially considering the ongoing dispossession of Indigenous
peoples and Reconstruction’s failures in fostering equality and progress for
Black people.
Yet, the persistent belief in the triumph of US democracy during crucial
periods in our history, beginning with the end of slavery, remains a part of
the country’s propaganda—and something that many of us accept as factual.
We concede that once slavery ended, and Black folks were granted
citizenship with the passing of the Fourteenth Amendment during
Reconstruction, all was all right. However, historian Eric Foner notes,
“Reconstruction represented less a fulfillment of the Revolution’s principles
than a radical repudiation of the nation’s actual practice of the previous
seven decades. Racism, federalism, and belief in limited government and