An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

and places. In fact, the whole book could be considered unexpected. I
challenge the very notion of what we “know” about these relationships. I
am only mildly interested in writing about the relationship between, for
example, the Five Tribes and enslaved Africans, though I’m sure that’s
what many will expect. The topic of enslavement and dispossession in the
nineteenth century dominates the books on African Americans and Native
Americans. However, if we are to build a shared Afro-Indigenous future on
stolen Indigenous land and recover the Indigenous roots of the ancestors of
stolen Indigenous Africans, then it will require we find underexplored
histories, rethink “accepted” histories, and survey solidarities and tensions
—and also imagine how the world might look after white supremacy and
settler colonialism have been dismantled.
I have not written this book as a historical narrative, where the author’s
voice is almost entirely mute. Throughout the pages I offer commentary
here and there so that you, dear reader, and I can have an in-text
conversation.
—KYLE T. MAYS, PHD
Atlanta and Los Angeles