We Are the Land

A History of Native California

By: Damon B. Akins, William J. Bauer Jr.

Narrated by: Kaipo Schwab

Before there was such a thing as "California," there were the People and the Land. Manifest Destiny, the Gold Rush, and settler colonial society drew maps, displaced Indigenous People, and reshaped the land, but they did not make California. Rather, the lives and legacies of the people native to the land shaped the creation of California.

We Are the Land is the first and most comprehensive text of its kind, centering the long history of California around the lives and legacies of the Indigenous people who shaped it. Beginning with the ethnogenesis of California Indians, this book recounts the centrality of the Native presence from before European colonization through statehood—paying particularly close attention to the persistence and activism of California Indians in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

The book deftly contextualizes the first encounters with Europeans, Spanish missions, Mexican secularization, the devastation of the Gold Rush and statehood, genocide, efforts to reclaim land, and the organization and activism for sovereignty that built today's casino economy.

A text designed to fill the glaring need for an accessible overview of California Indian history, We Are the Land will be a core resource in a variety of classroom settings, as well as for policymakers interested in a history that centers the native experience.

©2021 The Regents of The University of California (P)2022 Tantor

The history we didn’t learn in 4th grade

This fills so much of the gaps in education around California history. Loved learning about our home

Incredible

An incredible review of history that probably every Californian should familiarize themselves with. Highly recommended

Compelling and comprehensive history of the First Nations of California

Well cited and thoroughly researched. The author pulls from seemingly every source imaginable to paint a very interconnected picture of native peoples and their survivance through brutal crimes against humanity and their shared legal and cultural victories. The narrator engages you with authentic diction, capturing the wit and essence of many disparate groups that share common connections to the land.