Native American history

Clarence Thomas Took a Swipe at My Dissertation Research in a Decision. Here's Why He's Wrong

by Gregory Ablavsky

Historians' work played a huge role in a recent decision affecting Native American children. But the dissent by Clarence Thomas showed an appalling willingness to cherry-pick from the past that undermines originalism's own claims to legitimacy. 

Watch Scorsese's "Killers of the Flower Moon" with Attention to the Resilience of Native Women

The new film examines the greed, racism and murder that followed the discovery of oil on Osage land, but puts the experience of Osage women at the center of its narrative. 

Anita Yellowhair, Survivor of Arizona Boarding School, Shares Story after 60 Years

Anita Yellowhair was taken from the Navajo reservation in Arizona to the Intermountain Indian School, the largest of the boarding schools in the United States, intended to separate children from indigenous ways of life. 

The Siege of Wounded Knee was a Beginning for Renewed Native Resistance

by Benjamin Hedin and Nick Estes

Movement activists occupied the Wounded Knee site in 1973, in defiance of corrupt tribal leadership and federal authorities. Both the occupation and the massacre of Native people at the same place in 1890 had been cast as tragic endings. Native activists insist that they represent cultural and political rebirths. 

Ned Blackhawk Unmakes the American Origin Story

In "The Rediscovery of America" the historian presses for encounter, rather than discovery, to be the dominant theme of early American history. He explains here what can be gained by adopting this lens. 

Why is University of Minnesota Slow to Meet Obligations to Repatriate Native Artifacts?

Many institutions have been able to avoid repatriating artifacts because of the stringency of requirements that individual tribes document an affiliation with the objects in question, as well as a lack of transparency about holdings. 

New York State Faces Local Backlash for Ban on Native Team Names

New York's state Board of Regents estimates that 60 school districts still use Native-related nicknames or iconography. Under new policies, those schools would lose funding if they don't change the names. 

Learning from Historical Fiction: A Family Tale Reveals a Brief Multicultural Moment of the American West

by Alix Christie

One novelist's work adapting the story of her 19th century forebears (the last Hudson's Bay Company trader in the US, his Nez Perce wife, and the family that they raised) led her to archives, historians, and the challenge of narrating the complexities of the period when conquest supplanted a hybrid indigenous-European society between the Rockies and the Pacific. 

"Indigenous Continent" Seeks Shakeup of American History

by Sean T. Byrnes

Pekka Hämäläinen seeks to frame the history of North America in terms of the indigenous peoples who settled the continent before the arrival of Europeans and, crucially, continued to dominate the continent into the nineteenth century. 

Native Wikipedians Fight Back against Erasure of Indigenous History

by Kyle Keeler

While the internet is often seen as a hotbed of revisionism and "political correctness," Wikipedia editors who seek the inclusion of indigenous perspectives on American history often are stymied by resistant editors and the platform's rules, which discount the reliability of new, critical scholarship. 

Caroline Dodds Pennock on The Indigenous Americans Who Visited Europe

by Karin Wulf

In contrast to the stock story of the "Age of Exploration," Indigenous Americans often traveled to Europe afte 1492. A new book looks to this history to examine the origins of a cosmopolitan world. 

Major Museums are Failing Obligation to Return Human Remains to Tribes

Why has the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act failed to ensure the return of human remains, funerary artifacts, and other items to tribal authorities? 

Can We Learn from a 300-year Old Murder, and the Treaty that Followed?

by Nicole Eustace

The resolution of a crisis caused by the murder of a Seneca man by two English fur trappers modeled the kind of restorative justice principles that are being raised today by criminal justice reformers. 

Podcast: The Battle for the American West

H.W. Brands, Lori Daggar and Lindsay Robertson join National Constitution Center President Jeffrey Rosen to discuss new perspectives on the histories of conquest in the American west. 

Haaland v. Brackeen: The Case that Could Break Native Sovereignty

by Rebecca Nagle

"The U.S. has been passing laws that treat tribes and tribal citizens differently from non-Native citizens since the founding of the republic. If that is unconstitutional, the entire legal structure defending the legal rights of Indigenous nations could crumble."

OAH, AHA File Joint SCOTUS Brief in Case Affecting Indigenous Adoption and Family Rights

"If the court strikes down the ICWA in whole or in part, the decision could have devastating impacts on Native American families and, potentially, on federal Indian law writ large. Resuming the practice of Native child removal would cause active harm to Native families as well as jeopardize the future sovereignty of tribal governments.

Saying Hello in Navajo with NEH Chair Shelly C. Lowe

The new NEH chair discusses her family history in Arizona, the maintenance of Navajo language and culture, and the future of the humanities. 

Which Native Land are You On?

"Native Land Digital, an Indigenous-led nonprofit based in Canada, is working to facilitate such conversations and document this history including by putting together a searchable map of Native territories, languages and treaties."

New Project to Interrogate Indigenous Enslavement in Americas

The project hopes to build a publicly accessible database of documents to allow descendants of enslaved indigenous people to locate information about their ancestors. 

Indigenous Singer-Activist Buffy Sainte-Marie Condemns Doctrine of Discovery at Heart of Colonialism

Indigenous musician and activist Buffy Sainte-Marie has written and sung about the struggles of Native American and First Nations peoples for decades.