Author Talk: Linford D. Fisher — Stealing America: The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery in U.S. History

About This Event

Join author Linford Fisher in a discussion of his book, Stealing America, where he shows that although the first enslaved Africans arrived in Jamestown in 1619, European slavery in America began more than a century before. The enslavement of Indigenous people began in the years just after 1492, ensnaring an estimated three to six million Natives throughout the Americas. Although largely erased from the public consciousness, Native enslavement continued for centuries to become a colossal phenomenon that affected nearly 600,000 Native Americans in North America alone, revealing the shocking truth that American colonizers enslaved Natives in roughly the same numbers as they imported enslaved Africans. From Virginia to California, from New England to Barbados, Stealing America traces the history of Indigenous enslavement and land dispossession, detailing how colonizers captured Natives and often deliberately mislabeled them as Black slaves to avoid detection. While the American Revolution pealed the bells of freedom for colonists, it paved a larcenous trail of westward expansion that subsequently plundered Indigenous land and stole the labor of Natives from nations like the Cherokee, Navajo, Nisean, and many others. “This double theft,” Fisher writes, “was central to the origins, growth, and eventual success of the English colonies and the United States—not just initially but throughout all of American history.” Fisher will weave together accounts of major episodes in Ameri Listed from Boston Public Library's public calendar. Details and registration: https://bpl.bibliocommons.com/events/6a5e8c9ef213992f00c5b6a6