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TUC Radio is produced by Maria Gilardin

Maria Gilardin learned radio in the KPFA news department in 1980 and was one of the founders of the women's department. She co-wrote the GATT Guide for the Earth Summit in Rio, was founding producer of the national weekly public-affairs show Making Contact, and is a member of the International Forum on Globalization. Since 1993, Maria has written and produced radio on global trade and great ideas of local resistance to globalization.

About this series: "An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States"

About the author: Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz grew up in rural Oklahoma, the daughter of a tenant farmer and part-Indian mother. She holds a Ph.D. in history and is an activist in the international Indigenous movement for more than four decades.

This first part of the program brings you Dunbar-Ortiz' description of North America before invasion, the emergence of the US concept of a chosen people, the development of the role of the US military as a force for genocide that seamlessly transitioned into the US foreign wars, the role of militias, a brief history of AIM, the American Indian Movement, and the consequences of the Gold Rush in California.

During Q&A Dunbar-Ortiz was asked about an earlier book by her. The Great Sioux Nation, published in 1977, came out of the 1974 Wounded Knee trials where Dunbar-Ortiz was an expert witness.

Dunbar-Ortiz is the author or editor of seven other books, including Roots of Resistance: A History of Land Tenure in New Mexico; The Great Sioux Nation; Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie, and Blood on the Border: Memoir of the Contra War. She lives in San Francisco.

I recorded Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz on Dec. 4, 2014, at Green Apple, one of the last used bookstores in San Francisco. Her book had been published two months earlier.