"The colonial assault on California's Native communities has come in many toxic forms, including the many bad history books that have painted Indigenous Peoples as doomed and now vanished. With We Are the Land, Damon Akins and William Bauer offer a powerful tonic . This masterful history presents the experiences of California Indians as marvelously complex, grounded in land and place, and most of all continuing, from the days of Indian autonomy before the Spanish through the maelstrom of the Gold Rush and on to the conflicted, postindustrial American present. A remarkable and welcome accomplishment, this book will change the way we understand California's Indians and California's history."—Louis S. Warren, author of God’s Red Son: The Ghost Dance Religion and the Making of Modern America

"Damon Akins and William Bauer have succeeded brilliantly in writing the first ever comprehensive history of Native California. Centering Indigenous perspectives and deep connections to place, We Are the Land provides an erudite and moving account of California's Native peoples as explorers, adapters, workers, visionaries, artists, activists, sometimes victims but always survivors, and an enduring part of California history."—Jeffrey Ostler, author of Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas

"An ambitious project to reclaim California history as inherently Indigenous. Grounded in land and place, it is not so much a history but rather--and rightfully--histories, interwoven stories of peoples created in and of the land. This is a long-awaited and monumental book."—Terri A. Castaneda, author of Marie Mason Potts: The Lettered Life of a California Indian Activist

"This book is a must-read for anyone interested in California history. Bauer and Akins have produced a powerful and richly narrated history of the Indigenous experience from time immemorial to the present. From cover to cover, this book values Indigenous voices and knowledge systems to produce an incredibly engaging story of our collective past. We are the Land is high narrative and scholarship at its best!"—Kent Blansett, author of A Journey to Freedom: Richard Oakes, Alcatraz, and the Red Power Movement

"This monumental effort seeks nothing less than reimagining California's history. It's an important contribution not only to California but also a template for other regional, national, and global histories. Simply put, this book is a breathtaking, sweeping, and inspiring read."—Natale Zappia, author of Traders and Raiders and co-author of Rez Metal: Inside the Navajo Nation Heavy Metal Scene

“A Native American rejoinder to Richard White and Jesse Amble White’s California Exposures.”—Kirkus Reviews

Rewriting the history of California as Indigenous.

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, We Are the Land 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 casual readers and policymakers interested in a history that centers the native experience.