The Indigenous Origins of the American Revolution

Sweeping Retelling of U.S. History Shows How Native Americans Are Essential to Understanding Modern America

The most enduring feature of U.S. history is the presence of Native Americans, yet most histories focus on Europeans and their descendants. This long practice of ignoring Indigenous history is changing, however, with a new generation of scholars insisting that any full American history must address the struggle, survival, and resurgence of American Indian nations.

In The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of American History (Yale University Press; April 25, 2023), Ned Blackhawk interweaves five centuries of Native and non Native histories, from Spanish colonial exploration to the rise of Native American self-determination in the late twentieth century.

Ned Blackhawk is the Howard R. Lamar Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University, where he is the faculty coordinator for the Yale Group for the Study of Native America. Blackhawk is an enrolled member of the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone Indians of Nevada. A graduate of McGill University, he holds graduate degrees in history from UCLA and the University of Washington.

CSPAN will be filming this event for their American History TV Series.