83 pages • 2 hours read
Roxanne Dunbar-OrtizA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Dunbar-Ortiz concludes her text by referring to Giorgio Agamben’s notion of homo sacer, which she simplifies to define as people who have been “banned from society, excluded its legal protections” (Conclusion). What examples does she give from the text that might fit within this definition, and how do these examples help us to understand this term? Consider these points as you reflect on the text to answer the question:
Teaching Suggestion: Agamben’s homo sacer has often been brought up within conversations about US military tactics in places like Guantanamo Bay. Dunbar-Ortiz’s use of it shows how the United States government has made Indigenous people a group that is essentially left to die out through years of different political, cultural, and social policies. It may be helpful to identify specific sections of the text for students to sort through as they search for examples to fit within Dunbar-Ortiz’s simplification of homo sacer. Students may also benefit from being broken up into groups; each group could be assigned a specific section of the book to search through, and then they could share their findings with the rest of the class.
By Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Anthropology
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Books on U.S. History
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Challenging Authority
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Colonial America
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Colonialism & Postcolonialism
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Colonialism Unit
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Community
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Contemporary Books on Social Justice
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Education
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Equality
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Indigenous People's Literature
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Memorial Day Reads
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Military Reads
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Nation & Nationalism
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New York Times Best Sellers
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Politics & Government
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Power
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The Future
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The Past
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War
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