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Dunbar-Ortiz is a historian, activist, and teacher. She was born in 1939 in San Antonio, Texas, but grew up in rural Oklahoma in a poor, sharecropper family. Her mother was “part Indian, most likely Cherokee” and her father was a tenant farmer of “Scots-Irish settler heritage” (xi). She grew up in a time when there was rigid segregation among Black, white, and Indigenous parts of the town or schools and due to her mother being ashamed of her Indigenous ancestry, Dunbar-Ortiz rarely interacted with Indigenous people or communities near where she lived.
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She earned her Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1974 and taught at the Native American Studies Program at California State University, Hayward when it was established. There, she also aided in founding the Ethnic Studies and Women’s Studies departments. She is now a Professor Emerita of the Ethnic Studies department at California State University, Hayward. Although she is best known for her book An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, she is also the author of several other works covering topics such as Indigenous culture and history, feminism and women’s liberation, and the 2nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Her works include All the Real Indians Died Off, The Great Sioux Nation, and most recently, Not a “Nation of Immigrants”: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion. As a testament to her expertise as an activist and scholar, her book The Great Sioux Nation even later became a key document at the first United Nations Conference on Indigenous peoples of the Americas in 1977.
As a lifelong activist, Dunbar-Ortiz has participated in antiwar, anti-apartheid, civil rights, and the women’s liberation movements in addition to the pan-Indian movement. In 1968, she was one of the founders of a feminist organization in Boston, Massachusetts known as Cell 16, known to be the first to advocate for separatist feminism. Her dedication to the Indigenous rights movement for sovereignty has included active involvement in the American Indian Movement and the International Indian Treaty Council after being inspired by the Wounded Knee siege in 1973 and being encouraged to “embrace [her] Native heritage” by a Tuscarora organizer (xii). Dunbar-Ortiz also worked as an expert for the defendants of the Wounded Knee siege. Her lifelong work for Indigenous peoples’ rights was recognized when the Lannan Foundation awarded her the Cultural Freedom Prize in 2017.
As a lifelong activist, Dunbar-Ortiz has participated in antiwar, anti-apartheid, civil rights, and the women’s liberation movements in addition to the pan-Indian movement. In 1968, she was one of the founders of a feminist organization in Boston, Massachusetts known as Cell 16, known to be the first to advocate for separatist feminism. Her dedication to the Indigenous rights movement for sovereignty has included active involvement in the American Indian Movement and the International Indian Treaty Council after being inspired by the Wounded Knee siege in 1973 and being encouraged to “embrace [her] Native heritage” by a Tuscarora organizer (xii). Dunbar-Ortiz also worked as an expert for the defendants of the Wounded Knee siege. Her lifelong work for Indigenous peoples’ rights was recognized when the Lannan Foundation awarded her the Cultural Freedom Prize in 2017.
