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A forum is presented on the topic of the 1619 Project, a long-form journalism endeavor developed by Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times Magazine that places Black experiences in the center of American history. Reflections are offered in response to the book "The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story," as well as the project's podcast, teaching resources, and social media.

"I've Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land" by Alaina E. Roberts is a historical analysis of settler colonialism, enslavement, and citizenship in eastern Oklahoma during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The author explores the role of enslavement in the resistance of Native tribes to federal assaults on their sovereignty, as well as the experiences of newly emancipated African Americans and the impact of white settlement on Black and Native communities. The book argues for the inclusion of land rights as a form of citizenship during the Reconstruction era and connects existing scholarship on race among Native tribes to the broader context of settlement and statehood. While the book is engaging and would be suitable for undergraduate and graduate courses, it could benefit from deeper engagement with the records of the Five Tribes' governments to include more Native voices. [Extracted from the article]

During the late nineteenth century, critics of Indian affairs proposed a solution to the "Indian problem," the refusal or inability of Native people to assimilate into American society. Reformers concluded that kinship systems prevented acculturation by undermining individualism and social order and they turned to federal policy to fracture these extended indigenous families into male-dominant, nuclear families, modeled after middle-class, Anglo-American households. Reformers advocated for allotment, the subdivision of reservations into individual home- steads and the dissolution of tribal governments, because they believed that this process would foster individualism, promote economic self-interest, defeat communalism, and instill the core values of Anglo-American culture in Native people. Reformers expected private property to provide a foundation from which Indians would raise themselves up, and by giving Indians a means for self-support, they saw themselves as tipping the first domino in a chain reaction that would allow Indian men and women to distance themselves from the familial and tribal ties that hindered their personal growth and to cultivate their attachment to American society, which encouraged individualism and materialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]