Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is an American historian, writer, and activist, and Professor Emerita of Ethnic Studies at California State University, Hayward. She grew up in a tenant-farming family in rural Oklahoma and has been active for decades in Indigenous and social justice movements, including the international Indigenous movement and the women’s liberation movement. Dunbar-Ortiz holds a BA from San Francisco State College, a PhD in history from UCLA, an MFA from Mills College, and a diploma from the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. Her work has been recognized with honors including the 2015 American Book Award for An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States and the 2017 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize for her lifetime of activism and scholarship.

Dunbar-Ortiz is the author of numerous books on Indigenous history, land rights, and U.S. settler colonialism, including An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment, Not a Nation of Immigrants: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion, and The Great Sioux Nation: An Oral History of the Sioux Nation and its Struggle for Sovereignty.[