coprime

On yesterday’s commute home I concluded The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History by Ned Blackhawk. This is a history novel which focuses on the relationship between Native Americans and the United States, from the initial colonization efforts of Europeans to modern day.

I think the thing this book does best, and I think what it was trying to do, is make indigenous Americans active participants in history. Everyone knows that they were victims of countless atrocities, first at the hand of European invaders and later by the United States government, but they are often reduced to the role of passive victim: people to whom things simply happened. Not so, says Blackhawk. Native Americans were shapers of history as much as anyone else, and he brings their role and influence to the forefront here.

One of the things this pushes back on hard is the idea of inevitability: that what happened to the indigenous people of North America was always going to happen. We can see, throughout this book, so many moments when things could have been different if the right people had chosen differently.

It also is very revealing as to the sources of anti-indigenous violence in the decades before and after the American Revolution. It was in many cases, the settlers who were pushing hardest for violence and dispossession of the native peoples, not the government. Of course, the government agreed in the end, but both the British and later the American government initially wanted more diplomatic relationships with Native American tribes—but the settlers, fueled by bigotry, greed, and fear, lobbied hard for a more severe approach, and in the end, they won.

It’s also an incredibly detailed chronicle of native resistance to colonization and how hard Native Americans have fought for centuries to preserve their cultures and be allowed to simply exist as they wish. The breadth and variety of techniques they have employed to this end are truly remarkable. Knowing more about the modern legal struggles of the tribes is also a useful tool for looking at where to go next.

Some reviews found the book dry; personally, I can’t disagree that it was dry, but I did not find its dryness a problem. It is a historical chronicle, not a novel, and it does its job very well. It is well-researched and a thorough survey. I think it does well balancing covering a large swath of history with many different peoples and conflicts while also digging in a bit to certain specifics. I found it deeply engaging and I think the country would be better off if everyone had a better understanding of this material.

My only complaint is that it does end a little abruptly, but it had to stop somewhere.