Review: We Are the Land: A History of Native California, by Damon B. Akins and William J. Bauer Jr.

Abstract

The title We Are the Land sums up the argument of this book, a history of Indigenous people in the present-day state of California. Ten chapters, ranging from origin stories to 1980s land battles, survey Indigenous relationships to their lands over time despite colonial displacement. Two maps orient readers to territorial areas and the region remade by colonization. Short “special vignettes” between chapters interrogate San Diego, the Ishi Wilderness, and Rome, among other locations. The book posits that “California is both a place and an idea” (p. 3). While the place is Indigenous, the idea is a product of settler fantasies of Indigenous disappearance through pogroms, assimilation, and removal that this text thoroughly upends.An exploration of the many ways that the people understood and stewarded their lands, from stories, songs, and place names to hunts, controlled burns, and irrigation establish Native worlds. Kinship, trade, and ceremony knit people across space and ameliorate conflict. Oak savannahs and their acorns, an essential food source, represent the interconnectedness of Indigenous worldviews and the region itself.During exploratory contact Native people “forced the Spanish to adhere to social protocols,” incorporating strangers into their economic and political systems (p. 42). Viewed from the beaches, the foreign expeditions which are often at the center of historic narratives are instead transitory. Diseases and settlers were not.The Spanish missions intensify the disruptions of exploration and disease. Priests and soldiers “came to stay,” reorganizing the landscape into presidio districts, ranchos, and missions, and by clearing the land and introducing domesticated livestock that trampled Indigenous foods (p. 67). While the missions “exposed Indigenous People to violence,” Native people indigenized Catholicism, strategically used mobility to retain their autonomy, and formed new refugee communities (p. 74).The patterns of colonial oppression and the exploitation of Indigenous labor shape the rest of the book. Mexican independence led to the secularization of the missions and coincided with the rise of the hide and tallow industry, which relied on Native laborers. The Gold Rush and Americanization brought genocidal violence, treaties, and another system of unfree labor. Indigenous land claims and labor became increasingly entangled, with Mexican and then American land policies reflecting the necessity of Indigenous labor in California’s early agricultural industries.Equally important was Indigenous resistance, according to the authors, who carefully outline its patterns over time and space. In the twentieth century, Native people creatively leveraged boarding schools and allotment to protect their communities. Termination and relocation led to another period of dispersal but bars, Indian centers, and college campuses emerged as sites for urban organizing. By the end of the century, many tribes invested gaming revenues in lands they had lost decades before.This well-written, accessible book reconceives California as Indigenous land with a focus on the ongoing practices of colonization and resistance to it. While it uses the language of theoretical framings like settler colonialism and survivance lightly, the text itself is a powerful illustration of the ongoing challenges of colonialism and the Indigenous survival of its many formations.