# Quote — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

> Within days of the assassination of Osama bin Laden, on May 2, 2011, it was revealed that the Navy SEAL team executing the mission had used the code name Geronimo for its target.' A May 4 report in the New York Daily News commented, "Along with the unseen pictures of Osama Bin Laden's corpse and questions about what Pakistan knew, intelligence officials' reasons for dubbing the Al Qaeda boss 'Geronimo' remain one of the biggest mysteries of the Black Ops mission." The choice of that code name was not a mystery to the military, which also uses the term "Indian Country" to designate enemy territory and identifies its killing machines and operations with such names as UH-1B/C Iroquois, OH-58D Kiowa, OV-1 Mohawk, OH-6 Cayuse, AH-64 Apache, S-58/H-34 Choctaw, UH-60 Black Hawk, Thunderbird, and Rolling Thunder. The last of these is the military name given to the relentless carpet-bombing of Vietnam peasants in the mid-1960s. There are many other current and recent examples of the persistence of the colonialist and imperialist sensibilities at the core of a military grounded in wars against the Indigenous nations and communities of North America. (p56)

- Author: [Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz](https://www.leafyquotes.com/roxanne-dunbar-ortiz.md)
- Book: [An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States](https://www.leafyquotes.com/roxanne-dunbar-ortiz/an-indigenous-peoples-history-of-the-united-states.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Roxanne_Dunbar-Ortiz#An_Indigenous_Peoples'_History_of_the_United_States_(2014)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/roxanne-dunbar-ortiz/an-indigenous-peoples-history-of-the-united-states/within-days-of-the

## More from this book

> Indigenous peoples offer possibilities for life after empire, possibilities that neither erase the crimes of colonialism nor require the disappearance of the original peoples colonized under the guise of including them as individuals. That process rightfully starts by honoring the treaties the United States made with Indigenous nations, by restoring all sacred sites, starting with the Black Hills and including most federally held parks and land and all stolen sacred items and body parts, and by payment of sufficient reparations for the reconstruction and expansion of Native nations. In the process, the continent will be radically reconfigured, physically and psychologically. For the future to be realized, it will require extensive educational programs and the full support and active participation of the descendants of settlers, enslaved Africans, and colonized Mexicans, as well as immigrant populations.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/roxanne-dunbar-ortiz/an-indigenous-peoples-history-of-the-united-states/indigenous-peoples-offer.md)

> The Indian-fighting frontiersmen and the "valiant" settlers in their circled covered wagons are the iconic images of that identity. The continued popularity of, and respect for, the genocidal sociopath Andrew Jackson is another indicator. Actual men such as Robert Rogers, Daniel Boone, John Sevier, and David Crockett, as well as fictitious ones created by James Fenimore Cooper and other best-selling writers, call to mind D. H. Lawrence's "myth of the essential white American"-that the "essential American soul" is a killer. (p94)

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/roxanne-dunbar-ortiz/an-indigenous-peoples-history-of-the-united-states/the-indian-fighting-frontiersmen.md)

> US policies and actions related to Indigenous peoples, though often termed "racist" or "discriminatory," are rarely depicted as what they are: classic cases of imperialism and a particular form of colonialism-settler colonialism. As anthropologist Patrick Wolfe writes, "The question of genocide is never far from discussions of settler colonialism. Land is life-or, at least, land is necessary for life." The history of the United States is a history of settler colonialism-the founding of a state based on the ideology of white supremacy, the widespread practice of African slavery, and a policy of genocide and land theft.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/roxanne-dunbar-ortiz/an-indigenous-peoples-history-of-the-united-states/us-policies-and.md)