Curriculum Review: A History of Us - The First Americans by Joy Hakim

This is one of the worst history books I have ever read. It is full of factually incorrect information, baseless opinions, and very little about Native peoples. The information about Native peoples is from Eurocentric viewpoint. The book almost entirely focuses on Europe and Europeans. Only 10 out of 39 chapters are actually focused on Native peoples of the Americas, and much of that information is wrong. It uses the word “Indian” throughout instead of correct terminology. She likes to quote European opinions about Natives, but doesn’t do the same for Native opinions of Europeans. The book repeatedly calls the Americas a “wilderness,” when in fact it was far from it. The information about Natives that is sprinkled throughout is either wrong or extremely biased. Here is a chapter by chapter breakdown:

It calls us the “first Americans,” which is something many of us don’t like because we don’t consider ourselves to be “American.” The map in the beginning is incorrect, places some nations in the wrong locations and puts ancient nations on the same map as later nations as if they existed at the same time.

Chapter 1 is about her opinions of history. It is full of cringe worthy quotes. It says that being American means your ancestors are “Indians, Vikings, Pilgrims and slaves”…as if we all have a common heritage…and even says we have a common heritage. We don't. She cays the U.S. is the “most remarkable nation that has ever existed.” It makes false claims about how supposedly no other nation has ever “provided” so much freedom, justice and opportunity. It claims the US corrects its mistakes. It also said that a peoples government had never been made before the US. These are all just opinions and do nothing to actually teach history. Many of the claims she makes are markedly false.  

Chapter 2 is about Mongolia and the Stone Age. It is extremely biased. For example, there's a part about imaging you live in Mongolia in the "stone age." It says "Oh, you are dirty and smelly, and you aren't wearing much - just an animal skin outfit. Your table manners are terrible; you rip your food apart with your hands and teeth."

Chapter 3 presents the land bridge theory as fact. (For more on this, read this 6 part series on Indian Country Today: https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/bering-strait-theory-pt-2-racism-eugenics-and-when-natives-came-to-america-9xKyWRQkmkupGnsoqo0-1g Part 1 can be found here: https://www.awaken.com/2015/01/bering-strait-theory-pt-1-how-dogma-trumped-science/). It has a made up story about how Natives may have migrated through the Americas that is not based on any facts. It says the Kenwick Man is from a “different stock,” as if we are animals. She regularly compares non-white people to animals throughout her books. The dates are also wrong. She claims people got here only around 15,000 years ago. Not only is that date linguistically impossible, but there are sites in the Americas that predate the Bering Strait by thousands of years. There are sites here that date back 20-50,000+ years. In the section about Kenwick man, she perpetuates the myth that some Native nations thought Cortes was a god. This is just a myth, but it is taught as a fact in this book multiple times.(https://daily.jstor.org/the-mexica-didnt-believe-the-conquistadors-were-gods/)

Chapter 4 says that “Indians” is a good word for us and that “Native” is confusing. “Anyone born in a country is a native of that country, so many of us are native Americans.” That quote is extreme erasure of our own identities, among others in this chapter. The chapter lumps us all together in to one people group as if we're all the same and says “Indians” did this or that, but then later explains that no one "tribe" did all those things, which is extremely confusing to children. She contradicts herself several times. She then goes back to generalizing us as one people/culture. She makes claims like "One thing Indians never did was to make good use of the wheel. Their lives would have been easier if they had." This is an inaccurate value judgement. She does mention that in Mexico people used wheels on children's toys (there are other places she doesn't mention though), but the reason people in the Americas didn't make wheels had to do with multiple factors. One being terrain - in many places, wheeled carts didn't make sense. Another being no domesticated draft animals. There were certainly domesticated animals in the Americas, contrary to popular belief, but most nations purposefully managed animal habitats instead of domestication. And another reason being...they didn't want to. This should not be a value judgement on the people, like this author makes it. They advanced in different ways, that doesn't make them inferior. This chapter is then interrupted by something about dinosaurs.

Chapter 5 is about the arctic. It uses the racial slur “esk*m*s” to describe arctic peoples. She contradicts herself multiple times and flip flops on what terms to use and when. She only mentions Inuit people by name, despite the fact that there are several other nations and cultures in the arctic. She basically makes it seem like the Inuit are the only ones. The information about arctic peoples is mostly incorrect here. One example: "There are no fires because there are no trees and therefore no wood." There are trees in certain parts of the artic that people had access to, but also she mentions oil lamps and then claims no fire. Oil lamps burn...with fire.  Another inaccuracy, she says "....used to build igloos as winter homes...An igloo is a domed house made of snow bricks with ice windows. (The word igloo comes from the Inuit word igluvijaq.)" No, the word "igloo" does not come from igluvijaq. Iglu is the correct word and it is its own word. Iglu just means "house" in Inuktitut (the language that she calls Inuit). Igluvijaq is a different word that means snow house. Also igluit is the plural of iglu, not igloos or iglus. Winter homes are not called igluit, that's just any home. She also says that in order to know about Native Americans’ pasts that you must fictionally time travel. Rather than getting your information from us? The actually people whose history it is? Basically she implies that modern Natives don’t know anything about our peoples histories. She barely acknowledges that modern Native people exist.

Chapter 6 is  about the southwest. It is almost entirely incorrect. Virtually nothing written here is anywhere close to correct. It's full of stereotypes and thinks she literally just made up. For example, she says "The southwest is a hard place to grow crops; it is too hot and too dry. Yet Pueblo Indians, more than any other Native Americans, depend on farming." While the desert is a hard place to grow crops, the Ancestral Puebloans (who she mistakenly calls Anasazi) developed one of the most extensive canal systems in the ancient world and were expert farmers and engineers (irrigation systems). But also, the Ancestral Puebloans did not depend on farming more than any other Native nations. Around 2/3 of what is now North America was agricultural in some form. MOST Natives depended on farming throughout the continent. (I'm assuming she's only meaning north of Mexico Natives, but regardless, Mesoamerica, which is part of North America, and South America were also mostly agricultural.) She compares us to animals multiple times and implies how inferior we are to Europeans at the time. She spells Native nation names incorrectly and puts Native nations together at the same time when in fact they existed in different time periods. She also says Native Americans had no freedom, which is false. Most Native societies were more egalitarian and more free than European societies. 

Chapter 7 is about the PNW. It is also almost entirely incorrect. It's also titled "The Show-Offs," which is just rude. It’s also written with extreme bias and says very rude things about the nations in the Pacific Northwest. She focuses almost entirely on her perceived negative aspects of these cultures and says nothing positive. This isn't history, it's an opinion essay that's mean spirited and factually incorrect. "Perhaps these Indians are just vain and boastful, like other people in other times and places." She also implies, yet again, that modern Native peoples aren't the experts on our own cultures: "Was the potlatch a way to gain power? Or to show off? Or something else? No one really knows." Um, yes, people DO know and those ceremonies are still important today. People from those PNW nations know EXACTLY what their ceremonies mean and what they're for. Claiming "no one knows" is not only just wrong, it's also racist in this context. 

Chapter 8 is about a random "tour" of different eco regions in North America. It is also mostly incorrect. The “tour” over the continent focuses on plants and animals and not on people. The information about the people is very wrong. She again says Native peoples didn’t have any freedom.

Chapter 9 is about the Plains. It is also factually incorrect. It infantilizes the Plains nations. It says Europeans made them not “poor” anymore and that they got lazy after Europeans came. It is full of baseless opinions. Virtually nothing said here is factual. Her opinions are again very rude. "These are among the poorest and hungriest of the Native Americans." No, just no. Plains nations were expert landscape engineers and were thriving before Europeans. One of the largest pre-European cities north of Mexico was in the plains. Etzanoa had over 20,000 people. 

Chapter 10 is about mound builders. It is full of false information and baseless opinions yet again. It calls the mound builders weird and says we only know things about them because of M.C. Hopewell, not from actual Native peoples who are descended from the mound builders and know their cultures. It talks about their governments and societies, but doesn’t do that for any other Native peoples or regions in the rest of the book, when it should. The focus on material cultures only throughout the book is harmful and perpetuates stereotypes. She also calls the mounds just "dirt mounds." This gives a very false impression of what they are. They're carefully designed earthen pyramids. 

Chapter 11 is quite strange and makes very little sense. It is about the eastern woodlands. She contradicts herself in the footnotes repeatedly. She again gives baseless opinions throughout and much of the information is incorrect. She calls the people “unusual” and uses incorrect names for nations. "They are unusual, these 'terrible' people. They believe in peace and brotherhood, but when they fight they are fierce and cruel." 

Chapter 12 is about the Haudenosaunee. It gets a few things sort of correct, but from a biased perspective. It calls the "Iroquois" a nation, which they are not. They're a confederacy of nations. 

Chapter 13 is where we stop talking about Native peoples and move on to focusing on Europeans. This chapter is entirely about the Norse, so called "Vikings." It is worded in a Eurocentric way – ie: it says Thorvald was the first white man to be killed by “Indians” rather than saying he was the first white man to invade and kill Natives.

Chapter 14 is odd and contradictory. It talks about Europeans inventing things that already existed, then says “well actually…” these things already existed, and then goes back to praising European “inventions.” It is entirely about Europe.

Chapters 15-18 are about Columbus. It perpetuates many myths about him and says he was a “gentleman” and one of the best sailors ever. The things she says about him are either opinions of hers or historically inaccurate (for example, he wasn't that good of a sailor). It perpetuates the cannibal myths that Columbus made up, infantilizes the Taino, and says he killed ALL of the Arawak peoples. Not only do Arawak people exist today on the mainland of South America, but many Taino survived in the Caribbean as well. It’s all extremely biased and much of the information is incorrect. Again, this is not history. It's factually incorrect and full of her opinions. 

Chapters 19 and 20 are about other “explorers.” These Europeans were not explorers at all. They were conquers, invaders, colonizers. They were not motivated by exploration, but by exploitation. It says nothing accurate about Natives and perpetuates cannibalism myths again.

Chapter 21 makes multiple false claims. It says most Natives didn’t have religious freedom, lumps us all together into one people/culture, and perpetuates European myths about the Mexica (Aztec), specifically mass human sacrifice (which is a myth). It makes claims about the US birthing religious freedom and has tired tropes about “good” people doing “bad” things. It specifically names European nations, but then lumps all Africans, Arabs and “Indians” into homogeneous groups.

Chapters 22 and 23 basically say that conquest was just the way of the world and that Cortes was an okay guy. It perpetuates many myths about the Mexica (Aztec) and implies how inferior they were. It also again makes the claim that the Mexica thought Cortes was a god. This has been proven false (see article linked previously in the review). It gets very little right. It uses the “they thought they were doing right” defenses for the Spanish, but not for Natives. This is a major bias. 

Chapter 24 claims most Native deaths were accidental by disease and completely ignores genocide and biological warfare. (For more on this, read An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, especially chapter 2). The author makes extremely biased assumptions. It says, “It wasn’t all bad though. Spaniards brought their religious faith and their architecture to Mexico and South America. They brought their language, their arts, and their elegant manners. They brought learning: the first printing press arrived in mexico city in 1539 and a university in 1551. They encouraged truth telling: they let their historians write the good and the bad about what was happening in America. They built magnificent churches and palaces. They ended the terrible blood sacrifices that had been part of the indian religion in middle America.” Not only is this almost entirely false – it’s extremely pretentious. It’s an implication of superiority. Basically she's saying Spanish culture and society was better and it's good they conquered and forced their culture and religion on people.

Chapters 25-29 are all about Spanish “explorers” searching for the mythical city of Cibola. It’s full of inaccuracies about Natives and baseless opinions, yet again. It calls the Spanish actions “adventures,” perpetuates myths about us and “Indian attacks,” (self-defense) and how the Americas were “wild” (they weren't). It calls conquistadors “tough, energetic and brave," in an example of Eurocentric bias (positive toward Europeans) which is prevalent in her writing. 

Chapter 30 is all about praising the Spanish and their colonizing of the Americas and calls it an amazing accomplishment. It says nothing nice about Natives, though. Chapter 31 is all about Spain and Catholic/Protestant conflict. Chapter 32 is about the French. It talks about them eating someone so they wouldn’t starve, but doesn’t call them cannibals like it calls several Native nations throughout the book, even though those nations were never cannibals and these French people actually ate someone.

Chapter 33 at least acknowledges they’re fighting over land that isn’t theirs…that’s the only nice thing I can say. Chapter 34 is about the French. It calls Samuel De Champlain “outstanding” and lumps Natives all together into one group again. It uses incorrect Native nation names again. It says St. Augustine and Quebec are the oldest continuously inhabited cities in North America, ignoring the fact that Taos Pueblo and several other Pueblos actually are. It is about the Fur trade. Again with the cannibal myths and surviving “Indian attacks.” It also talks about "civilizing" the Indians, as if forced assimilation and cultural genocide are good things.

Chapters 35 and 36 are about England. Chapter 37 is another weird one full of opinions. It calls Europeans arrogant and calls the Aztec arrogant, but then says it’s “too bad” to have to call the Europeans arrogant and doesn’t say that of the Aztec. It’s all very strange. It uses the slur “s*v*g*s,” but doesn’t explain why it is bad. It calls the Americas a wilderness again.

Chapters 38 and 39 are all about the English. It calls the Americas a “sleeping giant of a land,” which basically implies we didn’t do anything amazing with ourselves or the land (which is completely untrue), and then it ends.

I have read all 10 books now and put up reviews of books 1-4 so far. The rest of the books are just as bad. They do not include Native peoples into the present times, which is an extremely important thing that textbooks can and should do. Not only do I not recommend this book, but I suggest staying far, far away from it. This book series is often highly recommended in homeschool circles and used in some online public schools.

Here are some notable quotes from the text:

“I believe the United States of America is the most remarkable nation that has ever existed. No other nation in the history of the world has ever provided so much freedom, so much justice, and so much opportunity to so many people.”

“You can fly to northern Canada or Alaska and visit the Eskimos, but if you want to know about the traditional ways of life of most other Native Americans, you will have to climb back into the time capsule.”

“Perhaps these Indians are just vain and boastful, like other people in other times and places.”

“Plains Indians are not plain at all”

“These are among the poorest and hungriest of the native Americans.”

“…they are unusual, these “terrible” people. They believe in peace and brotherhood, but when they fight they are fierce and cruel.”