Michael: Okay, Kevin. Five words to review American history as you learned it in high school. Kevin: Oh, easy. Columbus, Pilgrims, Revolution, cowboys, the end. Michael: Perfect. Now, five words for the book we're discussing today. Kevin: Everything you just said is wrong. Michael: That's a pretty good summary of The Rediscovery of America by Ned Blackhawk. This book just won the National Book Award, and it's this sweeping, powerful retelling of our entire history. It fundamentally challenges that neat, tidy timeline we all learned. Kevin: And the author, Ned Blackhawk, isn't just a historian at Yale—he's an enrolled member of the Te-Moak tribe of the Western Shoshone. So this isn't just an academic exercise for him; it's personal. It’s history written from the inside out. Michael: Exactly. And that idea—that everything we learned might be wrong, or at least dangerously incomplete—starts right at the beginning. The book forces us to move past the myth of "discovery" and instead see American history as a story of "encounter." Kevin: What’s the real difference there? Encounter versus discovery. It sounds like a subtle word change. Michael: It’s everything. "Discovery" implies Europeans arriving in an empty, "virgin land." "Encounter" means they arrived on a continent bustling with established nations, complex economies, and immense political and military power. And those Native nations weren't just passively waiting to be colonized. They were the engine of the story.

Kevin: Okay, but the story we always hear is about overwhelming European military power. Guns, germs, and steel, right? How much "negotiating" was really happening? It feels like they just rolled over everyone. Michael: That’s the myth Blackhawk dismantles. He shows that for centuries, European empires were often the weaker party, especially away from the coasts. They were forced to adapt, to make alliances, and to deal with Indigenous power. The Spanish learned this the hard way. Kevin: How so? Michael: Through what Blackhawk calls "arguably the first American Revolution." This happened in 1680, nearly a century before 1776. The Pueblo peoples of New Mexico, who had been brutally subjugated by the Spanish for generations—forced labor, religious persecution—organized a massive, coordinated uprising. Kevin: A coordinated uprising? Against the Spanish empire? Michael: Yes. Under the leadership of a man named Popé, they rose up, burned the churches their ancestors were forced to build, killed hundreds of colonists, and drove the Spanish completely out of New Mexico. For over a decade, the Pueblo peoples re-established their independence and lived free of Spanish rule. Kevin: Wow. A successful revolution that we never, ever hear about. So when the Spanish came back, things must have been different. Michael: Completely. They couldn't just reimpose the old system. They had to negotiate. They had to acknowledge Pueblo autonomy to a degree they never had before. It proves that Native resistance could fundamentally alter the course of an empire. And this wasn't an isolated incident. This dynamic—of Native power shaping colonial action—is actually at the heart of the American Revolution, too. Kevin: Hold on. You’re saying the revolution against the British was also driven by Native power? How does that work? Michael: Well, think about what happened after the Seven Years' War, what we call the French and Indian War. Britain won, but they were broke, and they now controlled a vast interior full of powerful Native nations who, as one leader put it, told the British, "Although you have conquered the French, you have not... conquered us." Kevin: Right, they were still there and still powerful. Michael: So Britain issued the Proclamation of 1763, which basically drew a line down the Appalachian Mountains and told the colonists, "You cannot settle west of this line. This is Indian territory." They were trying to prevent another costly war. But the settlers on the frontier were furious. Kevin: Why? Michael: Because they saw that land as their birthright. This led to incredible violence. In Pennsylvania, a vigilante group called the Paxton Boys massacred a peaceful village of Conestoga Indians who were supposed to be under the colony's protection. They even marched on Philadelphia, threatening to kill every Native person they could find. Kevin: That's horrifying. Michael: It is. And then you have another group, the Black Boys, who started attacking British forts and supply lines. Their grievance? They were angry that the British were trying to make peace and trade with Native nations. They wanted the war to continue. Kevin: Wait, so the colonists were mad at the King... because he was stopping them from taking more Indian land and killing more Indians? That puts the whole "no taxation without representation" thing in a very different light. Michael: That's Blackhawk's point. The standard story focuses on taxes and tea in Boston. But on the frontier, the revolutionary fire was being fueled by this intense conflict over who controlled the continent's interior. The colonists' desire for Native land was a direct challenge to the King's authority. It was a central, maybe the central, driver of the break with Britain.

Kevin: That is a wild reframing. So after the Revolution, when the colonists win, this tension over land must have exploded. Michael: It gets baked right into the founding of the country. And this brings us to George Washington. Kevin: The Father of His Country. I have a feeling he’s not the hero in this version of the story. Michael: Washington was one of the biggest land speculators of his era. He had massive claims to western lands, lands that were still occupied by Native peoples. To the Iroquois, who had their towns burned by his armies during the Revolution, he wasn't the Father of the Country. They had a different name for him: 'Conotocarious.' It means 'Town Destroyer.' Kevin: Town Destroyer. That hits hard. So how did he and the other founders deal with this 'Indian problem' after the war? Michael: This is where Blackhawk’s analysis of the Constitution is so powerful. He argues that the Constitution was, in many ways, a tool designed to solve this problem. It centralized power over Indian affairs in the federal government, taking it away from the individual states. Kevin: So the Constitution, our founding document of liberty, was also a blueprint for... organized land seizure? Michael: From this perspective, yes. It created a legal and political machine for acquiring Native land in a systematic way, through treaties that were often coerced and backed by the threat of violence. It set the stage for the next 150 years of U.S. policy: forced removal, the Trail of Tears, the creation of reservations, and the violent assimilation campaigns. Kevin: And the violence just escalated, didn't it? The book talks about the Civil War era. Michael: It's staggering. Blackhawk argues that while the Union was fighting to end slavery in the South, it was simultaneously waging a 'total war' of extermination against Native peoples in the West. In 1862, during the Dakota War in Minnesota, the U.S. army conducted the largest mass execution in American history, hanging 38 Dakota men at Mankato. The commanding general, John Pope, literally ordered his men to treat the Sioux as 'maniacs or wild beasts' to be 'utterly exterminated.' Kevin: That's sickening. It's like there were two wars happening at once. One to free people, and one to eliminate others. It feels so hopeless. Did anyone ever successfully fight back against this system once it was so firmly established? Michael: They did. The resistance never stopped. And one of the most powerful stories of modern resistance comes from the mid-20th century, during an era of federal policy called 'Termination.' Kevin: Termination? That sounds ominous. Michael: It was. The goal was to 'terminate' the federal government's relationship with tribes—to end treaties, dissolve reservations, and force Native people to assimilate. It was cultural destruction disguised as progress. The Menominee Nation of Wisconsin was a prime target. They were a successful, self-governing tribe with a sustainable lumber business. Kevin: So they were doing everything right, by American standards. Michael: Exactly. But the government used an $8.5 million land claim settlement they were owed as leverage. They told the Menominee, 'You can have your money, but only if you agree to be terminated.' Under immense pressure, a small, confused vote was pushed through. The result was catastrophic. Their hospital closed, their lands were sold off to pay taxes, and their community was plunged into poverty. Kevin: That's a betrayal on an unbelievable scale. They were essentially tricked into dissolving their own nation. Michael: But the story doesn't end there. A new generation of Menominee activists, led by a woman named Ada Deer, rose up. They organized, they lobbied, they fought for years. And in 1973, they achieved the impossible: they convinced Congress to pass the Menominee Restoration Act, reversing their termination. It was a landmark victory that helped kill the termination policy for good and kicked off the modern era of tribal self-determination.

Kevin: That's an incredible story of resilience. It proves the point that the fight never, ever stopped. Michael: And that's the core of Blackhawk's 'unmaking' of U.S. history. It’s not a story of disappearance. It's a story of constant presence, resistance, and what he calls 'survivance'—a combination of survival and resistance. From the Pueblo Revolt in 1680 to the Menominee restoration in 1973, Native peoples have always been active agents shaping their own destiny and, in the process, shaping the entire nation. Kevin: It really changes how you see the map of the United States. It's not empty space that was 'settled,' but a mosaic of homelands that were, and still are, contested. The book includes these incredible maps showing the sheer scale of Native presence, both then and now. It makes the erasure feel so much more concrete. Michael: Right. And Blackhawk leaves us with this powerful idea. He quotes the Pawnee scholar Walter Echo-Hawk, who said: "The widespread lack of reliable information about Native issues is the most pressing problem confronting Native Americans in the United States today." This book is a monumental, five-hundred-year effort to fix that. Kevin: So the takeaway isn't just about knowing the past, it's about understanding the present. It makes you wonder, what parts of the story are we still missing today? We'd love to hear what our listeners think. Find us on our social channels and share one piece of history this episode made you reconsider. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.