Dunbar-Ortiz outlines what she hopes to accomplish and introduces key concepts and terms. She clarifies that she is not writing about a history of Indigenous peoples, but rather a history of the United States as a settler-colonialist state by illuminating the experiences of Indigenous peoples. She poses the following “central question”: “How might acknowledging the reality of US history work to transform society?” (2) 

Dunbar-Ortiz characterizes the destruction of Indigenous civilizations as a policy choice, with settler colonialism as a key explanation of what destroyed Indigenous communities. She defines settler colonialism as relying on violence and a “genocidal policy” because the goal of colonialists involved extinction of Indigenous peoples from the outset. She further describes the founding of the U.S. as based in white supremacy, slavery, genocide, and land theft. Land, and who controls it, maintains it, invades it, or what happens to it, takes a central role in the history of the U.S.

Dunbar-Ortiz notes that the origin narrative or myth of the founding of the United States is based on the idea that Puritan settlers “had a covenant with God to take the land” (3).