Eating Fire, Tasting Blood: An Anthology of the American Indian Holocaust

As you walk out of your front door tomorrow morning look down. Look to your left and to your right. Touch the earth: the concrete the sidewalk or whatever surrounds you. Undoubtedly you will be touching the layered coverings of the remains of indigenous peoples. Not arrowheads not broken pieces of pottery but the very DNA of the first peoples of this continent. For five centuries from Columbuss arrival in 1492 to the U.S. Armys massacre of Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee in the 1890s to the renewed assault in the 1970s our continents indigenous people endured the most massive and systematic act of genocide in the history of the world. In Eating Fire Tasting Blood twenty established and up-and-coming American Indian writers from disparate nations and tribes offer stirring reflections on the history of their people. This is not a collection of essays about Native Americans but rather a collection BY Native Americans the story of native holocaust on a tribe-by-tribe level as told by those few who have been fortunate enough to survive. Included are original essays by Vine Deloria Jr. Paula Gunn Allen Linda Hogan and Eduardo Galeano.