In Facing East from Indian Country, Daniel Richter aims to correct what he sees as a significant flaw in dominant narratives of US history. These narratives typically frame the American story as one of westward progress across the continent. As successive generations of Americans set out from the established population centers in search of land and opportunity, they pushed the frontier of settlement westward, encountering and often coming into conflict with Indigenous peoples as they went. This view of American history is famously summed up in Frederick Jackson Turner’s influential 1893 essay, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.”

Borrowing a phrase from the French post-structuralist philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard, Richter calls this westward march a “master narrative”—a foundational myth that gives shape and meaning to all the smaller and more specific stories that fall under its shadow. Among the many problems with this master narrative is that it entirely neglects the perspectives of Indigenous people. By “facing east,” Richter means to reframe the American story from this neglected Indigenous perspective, not looking westward toward a mysterious land of danger and opportunity, but looking eastward toward the arriving wave of colonizers.

Richter centers this eastward-facing perspective in a place he calls “Indian country.