Blackhawk, Ned
The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History
Yale (New Haven)
2023
OUR SYNOPSIS: Ned Blackhawk places Native American agency at the center of histories of the Americas, emphasizing the impacts of community interactions. Working through a series of themes, periods, and regions, he demonstrates the inherent centrality of Indigenous stories throughout the vastness of U.S. history. His transnational analysis importantly illuminates how Indigenous stories transcended later imposed settler-colonial borders. He argues that a policy of Native American “termination” was pursued by colonizers until the late-twentieth century shift to “self-determination.”
BIG QUESTIONS:
What are some useful analytical strategies for amplifying Indigenous historical contributions? How does this book encourage you to approach this type of analysis differently?
It is interesting to consider terror as an influential tactic and/or factor in conflicts between Native Americans and colonizers. How does this relate to other major U.S. history narratives?
FEATURE QUOTES:
“Like all peoples, Native Americans have emerged as diverse peoples through centuries-old contests, continuities, and traditions. To understand such diversity and agency requires historicization. The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Remaking of U.S. History traces a particular form of Indigenous agency—the dialectic of Indian-newcomer relations that developed over centuries of interactions, bringing new communities together in inextricable and enduring ways.” (6)
PRIMARY SOURCES:
Benjamin Franklin, “A Narrative of the Late Massacres in Lancaster County, of a Number of Indians, Friends of this Province, 1764,” in The Paxton Papers, ed. John R. Dunbar (The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1957), 57-75, https://archive.org/details/paxtonpapers0000john.
BALTIMORE CONNECTIONS:
See and evaluate this JHU land acknowledgement, also explore the nations mentioned in relation to the maps of Indigenous nations presented on the inside covers of Blackhawk’s book.
