As you walk out of your front door tomorrow morning, look down. Look to your left and to your right. Touch the earth: the concrete, the sidewalk, or whatever surrounds you. Undoubtedly you will be touching the layered coverings of the remains of indigenous peoples. Not arrowheads, not broken pieces of pottery — but the very DNA of the first peoples of this continent. For five centuries — from Columbus's arrival in 1492 to the U.S. Army's massacre of Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee in the 1890s, to the renewed assault in the 1970s — our continent's indigenous people endured the most massive and systematic act of genocide in the history of the world. In Eating Fire, Tasting Blood, twenty established and up-and-coming American Indian writers from disparate nations and tribes offer stirring reflections on the history of their people. This is not a collection of essays about Native Americans but rather a collection BY Native Americans — the story of native holocaust on a tribe-by-tribe level as told by those few who have been fortunate enough to survive. Included are original essays by Vine Deloria Jr., Paula Gunn Allen, Linda Hogan, and Eduardo Galeano.