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Jameson R. Sweet, Ned Blackhawk. The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History., The American Historical Review, Volume 130, Issue 1, March 2025, Pages 488–489, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhae639
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Ned Blackhawk seeks to lay the foundation for a new paradigm of both Native American history and American history. He intends this new model to demonstrate how these histories are inextricably linked and how “it is impossible to understand the United States without understanding its Indigenous history” (4). Likewise, settler colonial policies and practices have deeply shaped Native American societies. Indigenous people have always been central to American history, Blackhawk argues, but scholars of American history have often ignored the significance of Native American nations in the shaping of US history. Blackhawk also works to break down common mythologies about American history and Indigenous peoples. The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History is a broad, ambitious project that excels in its task.
A work of synthesis of the last few decades of scholarship in Native-newcomer relations, Native American and Indigenous studies, and settler colonial studies, The Rediscovery of America lends a critical eye to this work while also attending to the erasures common in American history. Covering five hundred years of history from the 1490s to the end of the twentieth century, Blackhawk splits his narrative into two parts composed of six chapters each. Part 1 examines the extreme violence in the making of early America to the foundation of the United States. Part 2 focuses on the fight of Indigenous nations to maintain their sovereignty in the face of ongoing violence and detrimental federal policies.
