Native Peoples and Redefining U.S. History

Historians Ned Blackhawk and Brenda Child join for a conversation on Blackhawk’s national bestseller, The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History—a sweeping retelling of American history. They explore five centuries of U.S. history to shed light on the central role Indigenous peoples have played in shaping our nation’s narrative. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates.

Additional Resources

Ned Blackhawk, The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History

The Declaration of Independence

Pontiac’s War

Brenda Child, Away From Home: American Indian Boarding School Experiences, 1879-2000

Brenda Child, Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900-1940

Claudio Saunt, Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory

Jeffrey Ostler, Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas

Articles of Confederation

Naturalization Act 1790

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)

Eric Foner, The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution

Ned Blackhawk, Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the early American West

Brenda Child, Holding Our World Together: Ojibwe Women and the Survival of Community

Brenda Child, My Grandfather's Knocking Sticks: Ojibwe Family Life and Labor on the Reservation

Brenda Child and Brian Klopotek, Indian Subjects: Hemispheric Perspectives on the History of Indigenous Education

Michael Witgen, Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America

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