Tag: #Historical

Posted in #non-fiction

Famous Last Words

Posted on by BookReviews

Confessions, Humour and Bravery of the Departing

One last thing before I go . . . True stories of doomed figures from British history—and what they announced to the world as the Grim Reaper drew near.
 
Nothing focuses the mind more starkly than impending death. In this book, you can mount the scaffold and share in the final utterings of the condemned, and join the stricken in their deathbeds as their deeply entrenched secrets are finally unshackled.
 
Famous Last Words collects a fascinating selection of destinies, culminating in their often flamboyant, always captivating comments just before they shuffled off this mortal coil. Revealed inside are tales of sangfroid bravery, astonishing ironies, and overdue confessions often betraying grave miscarriages of justice. Writer and poet Sir Walter Raleigh had some typically forthright and goading words for his executioner as the hesitant axeman displayed fear and reluctance to perform his stately duties. The final words of convicted murderer Ernest Brown may have been a candid confession to another killing he had committed deep in the Northumberland Moors some two years previously. And what of Britain’s first actor to have had a knighthood bestowed upon him? Discover the staggering irony that saw his final words on stage prophetically turn out to be his last in life . . .


Kirsty
4 out of 5 stars
Fantastic example of micro-history
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 12, 2022
Format: Kindle
Verified Purchase
From medieval beheadings, Victorian hangings, deathbed confessions and even heartbreaking suicide notes, Wood has created a thoroughly dark and entertaining book looking at various individuals who left a mark on history as they departed from the world.


The level of research that has clearly gone into this book is compelling with the narrative gripping and never falters.


A fantastic example of micro-history, each chapter details a specific individual making it perfect to devour in one sitting or to steal away with in bite-size reads.


While the welcome addition of well known figures such as the tragic Lady Jane Grey and the adventurous Sir Walter Raleigh are included, I feel one of the strengths in this book lies with the diligent recording of more obscure figures who were just as (if not more!) fascinating than their better known counterparts.


The stand out distinction for Wood's writing however, was his dark humour which was very effective with certain cases for example Thomas David Cunnington. While suicide is of course a tragic event, Cunnington was in total control of his being worrying at one point "I'm getting to think gas will run out" as he chronicled his surprisingly upbeat suicide letter. He was also very adamant not to have to see his suicide letter recipients if his attempt failed. Perhaps a very selected humour, but one I felt was distinctly British in nature.
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In the Orchards of Shadow and Light

Posted on by BookReviews

In the French Resistance of 1944, trust is the difference between life and death. 

Post-war troubles heighten when our hero’s life is in danger and all he holds dear is at risk.


In the Orchards of Shadow and Light

The Shadow Series Book 1

by Arthur McMaster

Genre: Historical WWII Suspenseful Spy Romance



In the vast tapestry of war, outcomes are never certain. Its demands are endless, its sacrifices countless. Yet for one couple who will share war’s burdens and dangers-a daring American OSS agent and a French Resistance leader-its conclusion will transform both lives forever.

From the opening line, author Arthur McMaster, a retired foreign intelligence officer, makes clear: “No families escape the devastation of war.” What follows is storytelling you won’t be able to set aside. Amid the apple orchards and farmlands of war-ravaged Western Europe in the final years of World War II, we follow thirty-five-year-old OSS operative Claire Skiffington and French Resistance leader Jacques Berlangier through perilous clandestine operations. Eluding Vichy collaborators and Wehrmacht checkpoints, Claire’s cover is that of a simple pastry girl, but this emissary is far more than she appears.

Years after the Nazi menace has passed, in the small Breton village of Combourg, Claire and Jacques are in love and determined to build a life together. Their days and nights in Paris work to make it all magical. But someone wants Jacques dead. Why? And how will one estranged family member unlock the source of danger?

Brimming with suspense and rich in character development, In the Orchards of Shadow and Light features beautiful imagery and finely drawn characters. Written by former DIA-CIA analyst and award-winning writer Arthur McMaster, In the Orchards of Shadow and Light is the first in a trilogy based on espionage, romance, and suspense. Combines elements of “The Rose Code,” “The Nightingale,” and “All the Light We Cannot See” to create a rich atmosphere, original characters embroiled in real historical events, dangerous romance and compelling drama. This story represents one man and one woman’s perilous commitment to service in the face of danger: one couple’s commitment to overcoming treachery and blazing a future together.

 

What readers are saying:

“Finely crafted with an artisan’s touch, there is an unseen history beneath the lives of those trying to survive. Precisely researched, McMaster adroitly drops the reader behind the lines of clandestine operations. The grim destruction of Europe is brought to life with beautiful imagery and reconnoitered characters-every bit as interesting as those of Ken Follett’s Eye of the Needle and The Key to Rebecca. This is a fine novel no one should pass up.”

— William Walsh, author of Lakewood (TouchPoint Press)

 

As you begin this book, prepare yourself for reading a writer who knows the details of espionage so well they feel like second nature, rather than research. Prepare yourself for lush, lyrical prose and the historical span of an Ian McEwan novel. This is a spy story, a love story, and a family story set largely in France, during a war, but McMaster balances the deprivations of war with domestic arts, the healing chores of mother women who bake stolen oranges into cakes, somehow find tea to serve, and harvest the slenderest sprigs of tarragon and chervil, plucked from their gardens, and stored in delicate clay pottery. This is a white knuckle thriller written by someone with all the sensibilities of a poet.

— Susan Tekulve, author of In the Garden of Stone

  

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Near eleven, Jacques’s truck approached the barn. There, he and Claire saw two men in black coats putting a third into their vehicle. The barn behind them roiled in flame. From the look of it, the generator had exploded, or maybe they had simply set off some explosives. Jacques and Claire sat far enough back to observe what had happened but not close enough to be spotted.

“Goddamn it.”

“My God, Jacques,” she said. “They are taking him.” Their own luck had held. Thomas’s had not. “And he had been so clever. The boot heel. The shaving cream.”

“We have to go. Immediately!” Both watched, though only seconds more, until the Germans drove off with their prize, the barn behind them collapsing in flame. “Did you think he knew about Combourg?” Jacques asked her.

She had never mentioned it. They’d only met Thomas at the Laurent farm, in Épiniac. “As I recall, nothing was ever said to him about Combourg.”

“He would not know of the monsignor, Roger’s uncle,” she added. They had kept that secret. Claire rubbed at the palm of one hand, kneading it with the knuckle of the other.

“No. And he does not know our real names,” Jacques said. “But Roger Laurent could know.”

Jacques took her hand. “Thomas is lost, but what harm Roger could do yet is considerable. If he gives up Roger.”

“Will he? Where will they take him?” she asked as Jacques worked the truck around, knowing he was leaving behind his apples and, more importantly, his cover for travel.

“Saint-Lô, I would think. Some Nazi headquarters.”

As Jacques wrenched the truck sharply onto the road toward home, where the deeply distressed Claire would be able to arrange for her return to Bodney, a bottle scooted out from under her seat.

“Look at this,” she said, pulling it up from the floor. “It’s his Calvados.” Attempting to hold back tears.

“Keep it. We will finish it tonight in his honor with a tip of the hat to our friend.”

Passing near enough to the Laurent farm en route to Combourg, with relative safety still several kilometers away, Jacques pointed to the farmhouse. It was risky, but he had to take a look, remaining well back from potential observation. There, they were able to make out, standing near the entry door, the one thing they had hardly dared hope to see—a dark green motorcycle.

What Roger’s return portended was unclear, but given what had happened to Thomas, that outcome was surely the best they could have hoped for. Jacques slowed the truck and looked to the darkened house, their hearts racing.

“Oh my God. He’s come back.”

Jacques touched her hand.

She thought to say something, leaning into him. “Let’s go home, Jacques. Please!” Then added, “You did well, getting us through it all. So brave.”

“You and me,” he said. “We did. Together.” He touched her face tenderly.

In that moment, Jacques and Claire leaned toward each other for a necessary hug, and then a kiss. A kiss of relief. A kiss of what might yet be.





Poet, playwright and novelist, Arthur retired from full-time teaching, most recently as Visiting Assoc. Professor of English, at Converse College, in Spartanburg, SC. HIs books include: In the Orchards of Our Mothers (historical fiction novel); The Whole Picture Show (poetry) Musical Muse (academic); Birdies Never Die (golf); Givings & Misgivings (poetry) and The Spy Who Came Down with a Cold (poetry) and Need to Know (memoir).

Arthur’s first career was that of a foreign intelligence officer, with assignments with military intelligence and briefly with the CIA. Arthur earned an MFA degree in Poetry at University of Florida. Pushcart Prize nominations. He now teaches in Continuing Education Dept for Furman University (fiction and poetry). 

 

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MaidenTomb

Posted on by BookReviews

Maiden Tomb
Cynthia Sally Haggard
(Twelve Cursed Maidens, )
Publication date: February 5th 2025
Genres: Adult, Fairy Tales, Fantasy, Historical, Retelling, Romance

Follow twelve princesses down a dark tunnel into a grove of jeweled trees to a too-placid lake, where a prince will row you across to a gleaming castle to dance the night away. This historical fantasy—a retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses folktale—drifts backwards in time from the Early Middle Ages of Sicily to the Bronze Age of the Trojan War. It is perfect for fans of Circe and Spinning Silver.

Sixteen-year-old Justice wants to release her sisters from the jaws of Father’s imprisonment. But what can she do? The easiest way would be to find suitors for them.

However, that is not so easy, for Justice’s elder sisters are strange. What with All-Gifted’s madness, Protectress’s hair writhing with snakes, Death-Bringer’s grief (not to mention her strange name), Shining’s scandalous doings, Maiden’s tart tongue, Shadow’s crippling shyness, no sensible man would want her sisters as wives. Which leaves Justice, the seventh daughter, the one who possesses a quiet authority.

Maiden Tomb, Book One of the Twelve Cursed Maidens series, is a clean enemies-to-lovers romance.

The original fairytale—about twelve young ladies dancing all night—sounds so jolly doesn’t it? But I don’t think Twelve Dancing Princesses is about dancing at all.

I think it is about death.

Why do I think that? Well there appear to be some elements to the tale that go back, way back, hundreds, no, thousands of years, back into the Ancient World.

First of all, being rowed across a body of water sounds like a thread of Greek Mythology found its way into this tale. It is very reminiscent of Charon the boatman rowing the souls of the newly dead across the River Styx.

Then there are those jeweled trees. Where do they come from? Several scholars believe that element of the story comes from the Tale of Gilgamesh, which may have been originally composed around 1800 BCE. It tells the story of Gilgamesh, a King of Uruk a city-state in Sumeria, who is grieving for the death of his best friend. According to scholars, Gilgamesh ruled the Kingdom of Uruk in around 2700 BCE.

Then there are the princesses themselves. Have you ever wondered why their are twelve princesses? Again, the answer points towards the ancient kingdom of Sumeria, which existed in what is now present day Iraq, beginning in around 6,000 BCE. The Sumerians were renowned astronomers who used a base-12 numerical system, unlike the base-10 or decimal system we use today.

And so, there you have it. When you dig below the surface, a charming story from Europe has roots in the Middle East and seems to be thousands of years old!

And so, when I came to write Maiden Tomb, a piece of women’s fiction that explores the all-too-often captivity of women, I put back all those elements. We have the Gilgamesh epic, and elements of Greek Mythology, complete with snakes, ancient gods, and powerful goddesses. And far from being a jolly novel about young people dancing, as the title suggests, I made it a book about death.

I hope you find this coming-of-age novella as enjoyable to read as I found it fascinating to write.

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EXCERPT:

In the past week or so since we’ve arrived, life has taken on a predictable rhythm. I spend the mornings entertaining the ladies of the castle, with the lyre, my singing, playing knucklebones, and listening to their gossip. Truth to tell, nothing they say is particularly interesting as high-born ladies spend their time inside. When they are not diverting themselves with such pastimes as I provide, they are spinning, weaving, running the household, and caring for their children. They talk incessantly about their children. They know little of the outside world.

I escape after the midday meal, taking advantage of the ladies’ habit of resting as the sun’s chariot crests at the highest point of the day. While they sleep, I head out into the scorching countryside looking for Father.

We sit together in the shade, while Father does some task, usually repairing something, while I tell him everything I’ve learned the evening before. It is not that hard. Because I am small, and people are now familiar with my face, no one pays me any mind as I take my seat at the bench that runs along the side of the huge table where all the working folk of the castle eat their meals.

Father has told me never to be inquisitive, but I am dying to know more about the twelve mysterious ladies locked up in the castle tower, the ones people whisper about behind their hands when they think no-one is noticing.

As the light of the sun drains from the sky, as the king’s men sink lower onto wooden benches eating dish after dish, quail, pheasant, peacock, duck, eggs, bread, olive oil, wine, and olives, the noise of seven hundred men sharing jokes, laughing, and swilling wine reverberates around the hall.

Finally, I can take it no more.”Is it true what they say about the King’s daughters?”

The grizzled stranger on the bench next to me wipes the grease off his mouth with the back of a hand and spits out an olive pit.

“Where’ve you popped up from? You shouldn’t be here. You’re only a young lad.”

I am used to these remarks. After I left home I took a ship that was blown off course, taking me west to the land of the Italoi. I had to beg for money in the streets and in the taverns and it was not long before I heard news of Father, who was sailing to the west of this land.

And so I made my way across steep mountains before coming down to a lush plain. Playing my lyre to entertain strangers I followed their directions to the sea, to a wide bay within sight of a simmering, high, conical-shaped mountain.

And there, in a tavern, I met Father.

Now we are traveling home together. But Father is not here on the bench beside me, as he should be, but outside at a nearby farm pretending to be a stable hand.

This is one of Father’s clever strategies. He is a master at extracting information. He calls his strategy “divide and conquer” and it means that I have to use my lyre to find a berth for the night in some local chieftain’s house. This is not usually difficult, especially if there are ladies around because for some reason they always want to pet me.

Meanwhile, Father finds work on the outside as a shepherd, farmhand, or stable boy. By concealing his origins and pretending to be dumb, drunk, or both, Father is able to overhear a great many things. We have a plan to meet every day at noon, I escaping the blandishments of the ladies to visit the local farm for milk, cheese, eggs where I could happen upon the new stable boy, farmhand, or shepherd.

The only fly in the ointment is my age. I am only twelve years old and to my great annoyance, I look it. So Father made me memorize some phrases to offer when this issue arises.

“Father is here with me, but is suffering with an ache to his belly.”

One sentence is usually enough for most people. Father has instructed me never to offer explanations that are not asked for as it only makes people more curious.

But the fellow is staring at me, waiting for more.

I turn my eyes down. “Father told me to eat supper and then berth with him in the stable yard.”

“He’s the new stable hand, is he?”

I nod.

“Much good he’ll be with a bellyache.”

I look up. “Do you have a remedy for that good sir?”

Father always stresses the importance of asking for advice when a conversation turns sour, as it flatters the vanity.

The fellow hawks and spits, rising from his seat. “You’ll have to go to the kitchens for that, son.” He ambles off.

Author Bio:

Cynthia Sally Haggard was born and reared in Surrey, England. About 40 years ago, she surfaced in the United States, inhabiting the Mid-Atlantic region as she wound her way through four careers: violinist, cognitive scientist, medical writer, and novelist.

Her first novel, Thwarted Queen, a saga set in 1400s England with a Game of Thrones vibe, won the 2021 Gold Medal IPPY Award for Audiobook. Her second novel, Farewell My Life, a dark historical about a hidden murderer, won the 2021 Independent Press Award for Women’s Fiction and was the 2019 Distinguished Favorite for the New York City Big Book Award.

Cynthia graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University, Cambridge MA, in June 2015.

When she’s not annoying everyone by insisting her fictional characters are more real than they are, Cynthia likes to go for long walks, knit something glamorous, cook in her wonderful kitchen, and play the piano.

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Posted in #non-fiction

To Climb a Distant Mountain

Posted on by Reluctant Retiree

One woman’s inspirational tale about expressing joy amid loss and suffering.


To Climb a Distant Mountain:

A Daughter’s Tribute to Her Diabetic Mother

by Laurisa White Reyes

Genre: Historical True Memoir



In 1974, at the age of twenty-six, Cynthia Ball White was diagnosed with Juvenile Diabetes. Today, it is estimated that 1.25 million Americans suffer from what is now referred to as Type I diabetes, compared to 38 million who have Type 2 (adult onset) diabetes. It is a merciless disease that often leads to blindness, neuropathy, amputations, and a host of other ailments, including a shortened life span.

Despite battling diabetes for forty-five years, Cyndi beat the odds. Not only did she outlive the average Type I diabetic, but until her last week of life in 2021, she had all her “parts intact”. Her daughter often called her a walking miracle. But more impressive was Cyndi’s positive outlook on life, even in the midst of tremendous loss and suffering.

The author hopes that in sharing Cyndi’s story, others may be inspired to face their own struggles with the same faith, courage, and joy as her mother did.

 

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I’m going to tell you about my mother. Yes, that is the story I will tell. No other story really matters. I know that now. Funny, how you can spend a lifetime conjuring up magical tales of dragons and enchanters and heroes who will never exist except in your own head and on sheets of paper, when the stories that matter most happen every day all around us. I’ve spent most of my life making up stories. It’s what I do. But now that Mom is gone, I have no stories left. At least none that I care about more than hers.

My first distinct memory of my mother (I was five or six) was in the hospital. I’d come to know that hospital well. It’s in Panorama City, half an hour from where I live now, half an hour from where I lived then, two different cities—two points on the circumference of a circle with the hospital at its center. It’s where all five of my children were born, where my youngest brother was born—and died. It’s where Mom would spend too much of her life. But not yet. That would come later.

I remember the elevator doors opening and Dad pushing Mom out in a wheelchair. She wore a yellow robe that a friend had bought her when she got sick. She had crocheted me a hat. It was yellow too, criss-crossed strands like a spider’s web, with a green band. She gave it to me there. I wore it often as a child. Somewhere, I have a picture of me wearing it. The hat is in my mother’s hope chest now, the one she passed on to me when I got married. Been in there for years. Decades. It’s still a treasure.

I remember her disappearing back inside the elevator, waving, the doors sliding shut, swallowing her. I still feel sick, tight and hollow inside, when I think of that memory.

In the weeks leading up to that hospital stay, which would be the first of dozens, she’d been sick. She’d lost weight and felt very ill. She thought she was dying of cancer, but she postponed seeing a doctor because she had recently enrolled in Kaiser Permanente medical insurance through Dad’s employer, and she thought they had to wait for their membership cards to come in the mail. By the time she walked into the ER, she was on death’s door.

Her doctor smelled her breath, which Mom thought was an odd thing to do. And then he called in other doctors to smell her breath. It smelled sweet, like decaying fruit. Mom was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, which they used to call Juvenile Diabetes. It meant that her pancreas had completely malfunctioned, and she would be insulin-dependent the rest of her life. She learned how to give herself insulin by injecting oranges. She was twenty-six years old.

Mom actually felt relieved because it wasn’t cancer. There was no way to know then what diabetes would do to her, how it would shape not only her life but the lives of her husband and children and grandchildren, how it would gradually destroy her body a little at a time until it finally robbed her of life itself.

 



Last Summer in Algonac

by Laurisa White Reyes

Genre: Fictionalized Family Biography



From the Spark Award-winning author of The Storytellers & Petals…

The summer of 1938 is idyllic for fourteen-year-old Dorothy Ann Reid. She’s spent every summer of her life visiting her grandparent’s home on the banks of the St. Clair River in Algonac, Michigan. But unbeknownst to her, this will be her last. As Dorothy and her family pass their time swimming, fishing, and boating, they are blissfully unaware that tragedy lurks just around the corner.

Last Summer in Algonac is a fictionalized account of the author’s grandmother and her family’s final summer before her father’s suicide, which altered their lives forever. Inspired by real people and events, Laurisa Reyes has woven threads of truth with imagination, creating a “what if” tale. No one living today knows the details leading to Bertram Reid’s death, but thanks to decades of letters, personal interviews, historical research, and a visit to Algonac, Reyes attempts to resolve unanswered questions, and provide solace and closure to the Reid family at last.

 

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That last summer in Algonac, there was little water play for Father, who was now fifty-seven. Alberta, who had married less than two years earlier and had recently given birth to her first child, had opted to stay in Cleveland. She and Charles had been my grandest playmates while I was growing up, but now they both had new adult lives and families of their own. Even Charles, who was eleven years my senior (Alberta fourteen years), would prove too occupied with his wife Alice and their baby to venture into any games with me. I supposed Father might have played that role with me when I was young, but I was thirteen now, practically a woman, and neither he nor I dared suggest something so childish as to jump into the river for a splash—except for that one last wonderful afternoon.

Looking back, I wish that I had done it every day—that I had taken his hand and walked with him along the bank under the trees, or sat in the grass and taken off our shoes, letting our feet dangle in the chilled, meandering water. I wish that I had had the courage to ask him more about that old rowboat, whether he had ever taken it all the way across the river to Ontario, Canada, where he and his family had come from originally. I would have liked to have been in that boat with him rowing, his muscles taut under his shirt, his sleeves rolled to the elbow.

We wouldn’t have talked much. Father was a man of few words. But I would have listened to the ripples of the St. Clair lapping against the boat, the gentle cut of the oars through the water, the calls of birds overhead. It would have been enough just to be with him, to see his face turned to the sun, the light glinting off his spectacles, and to have seen traces of a smile on his lips.

1939, the year Father died, was a big year for America. It was the year the World’s Fair opened in New York, and the first shots of World War II were fired in Poland.  The Wizard of Oz premiered at Groman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, California, and Lou Gehrig gave his final speech in Yankee Stadium. Theodore Roosevelt had his head dedicated on Mt. Rushmore, and John Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath. All in all, it was a monumental year, one I would have liked to have shared with my father. He did live long enough for Amelia Earhart to be officially declared dead after she disappeared over the Atlantic nearly two years earlier, but otherwise, he missed the rest of it.

No child should have to mourn a parent. And if she does, at least things about it should be clear. Unanswered questions that plague one for the rest of one’s life shouldn’t be part of the picture.

Death is normally simple, isn’t it? Someone has a heart attack, or dies in a car accident, or passes away in their sleep from old age. Everyone expects to die sometime, and they wonder how it will happen and why. And when it does, as sad as it is for those left behind, the wonder is laid to rest.

Most of the time.

1939 was a blur. I’d prefer to forget it, quite frankly. But 1938 was worth remembering, especially that summer we spent in Algonac with Grandmother Reid and the family. As long as I could remember, we’d spent every summer on the banks of the St. Clair. As it turned out, it would be my final summer in Algonac. Our last summer together. Of course, I didn’t know it at the time, and I’m glad. If I could have seen seven months into the future, if I had known then how the world as I knew it would all come crashing down, it would have spoiled everything.





Laurisa White Reyes is the author of twenty-one books, including the SCBWI Spark Award-winning novel The Storytellers and the Spark Honor recipient Petals. She is also the Senior Editor at Skyrocket Press and an English instructor at College of the Canyons in Southern California. Her next release, a non-fiction book on the Old Testament, will be released in August 2026 with Cedar Fort Publishing.

 

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Posted in #History

Medicine River

Posted on by Reluctant Retiree

A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools

A sweeping and deeply personal account of Native American boarding schools in the United States, and the legacy of abuse wrought by them in an attempt to destroy Native culture and life

FINALIST FOR THE PEN OPEN BOOK AWARD • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, TIME, Smithsonian, The History Channel

“With a government that is rewriting history in real time, Medicine River stands as a testament to the truth.”—The New York Times

“Powerful. . . . An important work.”—Los Angeles Times

“Everyone, absolutely everyone, should read this book.”—Javier Zamora, author of Solito

From the mid-nineteenth century to the late 1930s, tens of thousands of Native children were pulled from their tribal communities to attend boarding schools whose stated aim was to “save the Indian” by way of assimilation. In reality, these boarding schools—sponsored by the U.S. government, but often run by various religious orders with little to no regulation—were a calculated attempt to dismantle tribes by pulling apart Native families. Children were beaten for speaking their Native languages; denied food, clothing, and comfort; and forced to work menial jobs in terrible conditions, all while utterly deprived of love and affection.

Amongst those thousands of children was Ojibwe journalist Mary Pember’s mother, who was sent to a boarding school in northern Wisconsin at age five. The trauma of her experience cast a pall over Pember’s own childhood and her relationship with her mother. Highlighting both her mother’s experience and the experiences of countless other students at such schools, their families, and their children, Medicine River paints a stark but hopeful portrait of communities still reckoning with the trauma of acculturation, religion, and abuse caused by the state. Through searing interviews and careful reporting, Pember traces the evolution and continued rebirth of Native cultures and nations in relation to the country that has been intent on eradicating them.