Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is a historian, author, memoirist, and speaker who researches Western Hemisphere history and international human rights. She grew up in rural Oklahoma, the daughter of a tenant farmer and part-Indian mother. She has been active in the international indigenous movement for more than four decades, and she is known for her lifelong commitment to national and international social justice issues. After receiving her PhD in history at the University of California at Los Angeles, she taught in the newly established Native American Studies Program at California State University, Hayward, and helped found the Departments of Ethnic Studies and Women’s Studies.

Her 1977 book The Great Sioux Nation was the fundamental document at the first international conference on Indigenous peoples of the Americas, held at the United Nations’ headquarters in Geneva. Dunbar-Ortiz is the author or editor of seven other books, including Roots of Resistance: A History of Land Tenure in New Mexico, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, and Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment. She lives in San Francisco.