In this episode of Think Back, I’m joined by the historian Kathleen DuVal to talk about her extraordinary 2024 book Native Nations, a sweeping thousand-year history of Indigenous North America. The book, which won the Pulitzer Prize, fundamentally reframes American history by restoring Native peoples to the center of the story, not as passive victims of conquest but as powerful political actors who shaped events for centuries.

Our conversation ranges from the rise and fall of vast Indigenous cities long before 1492 to the long periods in which Native nations and European empires dealt with one another as equals—or in which Native peoples clearly held the upper hand. DuVal challenges familiar narratives, showing instead a history marked by diplomacy, trade, adaptation, and resilience. We talk about why she uses the word “nation” to describe Indigenous societies, how Native history connects to global history, and how economic and political ties bound Native North America to Europe and the Atlantic world.

We also discuss how to balance stories of survival and continuity rather than erasure alone. It’s a deep, wide-ranging conversation about what American history looks like when Native nations are finally taken seriously.

* Kathleen DuVal, Native Nations: A Millennium in North America(2024)

* — , Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution (2016)

See also my conversation last year with Nicole Eustace about her book, Covered With Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America (2022)

Music by Akiko Sasaki (“The Union,” by Louis Moreau Gottschalk) and Zachary Solomon

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