Growing up in Iowa I always wanted to be a Native American, specifically a member of the Blackfeet Nation, because I was fascinated by their ability to hunt buffalo. But mostly because I thought the name sounded super cool. Over the years I began to accept, begrudgingly, that I was stuck being white boy. From Iowa. How uncool is that? But my fascination with Native American culture still lingers.

It wasn’t until I came to college in Minneapolis that I finally saw my first real life Native American. He was standing on Hennepin Avenue a block before a freeway on-ramp begging for change. Needless to say, it was not the noble introduction I had been hoping for. Over the years sightings like this would become painfully familiar, as these members of a once proud culture struggled to exist in a world that has been anything but kind to them.

Older Than America pulls back the curtain and one of the many horrible acts perpetrated against Native American cultures. But while most people can rattle off a laundry list of lies and deceptions perpetrated by the United States government and its citizens against Native Americans, generally people would think these things occurred decades, if not hundreds of years before they were ever born.

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