We at the HP got early access to a new book by the great historian Linford Fisher called Stealing America: The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery in U.S. History. It’s available next month (April 28, 2026). It’s an amazing, deeply researched journey through Indigenous slavery from Canada to the Caribbean that astounds even the most tuned-in student of American history, Atlantic history, Black history, colonizing history, and the history of modern slavery. If you, like most of us, thought very few “Indians” were ever enslaved, and that the enslavement of Black people dwarfed that of Indigenous people, you’ll learn how deeply wrong that is.
But it’s also a history of Indigenous agency, resilience, and ongoing political activism, with an Author’s Note at the end that discusses how we can support Indigenous rights and sovereignty today. Check it out next month!
For now, one passage struck us forcibly because it applies so well to the current situation of broadening fascism in the U.S. For centuries, Indigenous people fought enslavement in the courts, the churches, and the streets. They were open targets for any white person who wanted to enslave them, and the situation was made even worse by the fact that white governments and courts decided that Indigenous slavery was different from Black slavery. It wasn’t “really” slavery at all. And so Indigenous people who were enslaved were not officially identified as being enslaved. They were listed as apprentices and servants instead, erasing their bondage and making it harder for them to legally protest enslavement.
Here’s the passage concerning this situation that struck us:
All of these factors created immense challenges to Native sovereignty and concern for everyday living–fear of arbitrary enslavement for debt and minor infractions, of having one’s children stolen, of being hunted down during war, of white people constantly questioning one’s freedom, and of being denied one’s Native identity and community. [p. 182]
There could hardly be a better description of America today. Anyone who seems “foreign”, and not white, now fears the arbitrary enslavement of ICE concentration camps, their children being stolen, and of white people constantly challenging their freedom and their citizenship, while their ethnic identity and community are denied them through terrorization.
And, as any student of history knows, what begins with targeting one group of people quickly expands to target all. While ICE remains focused on non-white people, they now extend their violence to anyone who attempts to interfere in or even peaceably protest ICE attacks.
When Fisher uses the term “hidden history” he means that events that took place in the open, completely unhidden, were deliberately covered up later to erase them. He doesn’t mean that at the time, the events weren’t considered important, or that no one thought they were wrong. We see ICE and government at every level from federal to local destroying democracy and enforcing a fascist police state. It’s not hidden. We see the footage. But the media and the government are working in the moment to erase it, by starting wars and silencing reporters, protesters, and other witnesses.
It’s our job to work together to stop these crimes, first, and then to make sure they are not erased, now or later.
The Historic Present 