NATIVE NATIONS

A historical survey of Native America’s political autonomy.

In this impressive history, DuVal, author of Independence Lost and The Native Ground, offers a long-term view of how Indigenous peoples in North America flourished both before and long after the arrival of Europeans, leveraging their power and negotiating their place alongside or within settler culture amid increasing existential threats. The author covers the last 1,000 years, sketching a trajectory of resistance, adaptability, and endurance and countering other historians who emphasize the victimization and steady disappearance of Indigenous peoples. Focusing on decisive periods involving individual nations, DuVal presents a selection of “examples and trends of Native North American sovereignty, politics, economics, diplo­macy, and war.” In doing so, she provides a compelling record of Indigenous agency and provides a rich context for understanding the survival of—and the political challenges still faced by—hundreds of Native nations today. The colonization of the continent, she demonstrates, was neither rapid nor fated, and alternative historical outcomes in which Native America maintained control of large territories are plausible. “Nothing was inevitable,” writes DuVal, “about the rise of the United States.” A highlight of this work is the author’s revision of conventional understandings of the scale of pre-contact Indigenous communities. DuVal points out the sophistication and vitality of urban centers, which resembled their European counterparts in size and population density a millennium ago, before gradually dissolving in response to climatic and political shifts. Also cogent are the author’s summaries of the collective values and traditions that emerged out of this shift to smaller-scale societies. Throughout, DuVal is clear and cogent, and her foregrounding of Indigenous achievements and careful delineation of ongoing struggles for personal and collective autonomy offer a useful and illuminating corrective to past histories.

A revelatory account of the power and influence of Indigenous peoples in North America.