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"I've Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land" by Alaina E. Roberts explores the experiences of enslaved African Americans and freedpeople in modern-day Oklahoma. The author challenges the traditional narrative of settler colonialism, highlighting the role of Native American enslavers in the forced relocation of enslaved laborers from the southeastern United States. The book examines the complexities of race, citizenship, and belonging for Indian freedpeople in both tribal communities and the United States. Roberts also explores the impact of the Civil War, the Confederacy's alliance with the Five Nations, and the geopolitical tensions on the emancipation and rights of Indian freedpeople. The personal stories and family history woven into the narrative provide a unique perspective on finding belonging, freedom, and land in Indian Territory. The book contributes to the growing field of Civil War and Reconstruction Studies, emphasizing the importance of African American family history and collective remembrance in understanding marginalized histories. [Extracted from the article]

Natasha Trethewey's poem "Native Guard" begins and ends with the phrase "Truth be told," but the poem demonstrates just how difficult it can be to tell the truth — or even a truth — about history. "Native Guard" excavates historical events that many readers will find unfamiliar: the experience of Black Union troops guarding Confederate prisoners on Ship Island in the Mississippi Gulf Coast during the Civil War. This complex history is expressed in a crosshatched poetic form: contemporaneous journal entries arranged in a series of interlinked sonnets that juxtapose the history written in ink on paper with the pain written in blood on people's bodies and the bones buried beneath every historical account. While teaching the poem requires careful attention to historical context, poetic form, and repetition of words, the experience provides an answer to the question students keep asking: Why do we have to keep reading about slavery? This essay describes some pedagogical choices that may help students grasp their responsibility for seeking truths that can't easily be told because they lie buried beneath unexamined historical narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]