My Summer Book Report: The Rediscovery of America

"The New World forgets everything. The Old World forgets nothing."

I FINALLY finished my summer reading project. Whew.

“The Rediscovery of America” by Yale professor Ned Blackhawk, is not a light, summer beach read. It’s a large, textbook-sized tome (with 100 pages of notes!) that presents an in-depth picture of what happened all over North America when the natives met the colonizers in the Age of Discovery, the Age of Enlightenment, on to the present.

If you’re older than 35, thinking about the discovery of America might immediately bring to mind Christopher Columbus, wading ashore in the Caribbean, planting a flag and cross on the beach. Kids today learn that First Contact was probably the Vikings in Newfoundland in the 11th Century, not for conquest but mercantilism. This shift in understanding exemplifies how our viewpoints change with fresh knowledge.

Since 62% of Americans are over 35 (209 million), I think it’s safe to assume that unless they

live in Indian Country, many got their views of American Indians long ago, from elementary school courses or Western movies. It will take A LOT to change these long-held beliefs.

Across 500 years, The Rediscovery of America tells intertwined native and non-native histories from Spanish and French colonization through the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, the world wars, and the rise of Native American self-determination in the 20th century. It details how Native American actions created the environment for the American Revolution and how these contributions have been largely written out of history.

One of the most interesting things to me was how the post-WWI League of Nations created a worldwide groundswell of marginalized peoples seeking self-determination: the French rule of Vietnam, the British rule of India, the Suffrage movement, and the American rule over native tribes. Dr. Blackhawk devotes pages to the Society of American Indians (1911-1923) and the activism of Laura Cornelius Kellogg and Henry Roe Cloud.

The book also highlights ways in which American nation-building created a new myth about white immigrants — expanding the Anglo umbrella to include groups from Ireland and Eastern Europe. By determining who was “in,” it became easier to vilify “the other” and take away their lands, children, and more.

Sadly, for us Okies, it doesn’t include the latest plot twists of McGirt v. Oklahoma, Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta nor the fact that our Governor Kevin Stitt seems trapped in his own 19th-century, Eurocentric views of Indians, seeking to siphon $$ away from the tribes. As I was reading about how Congress took more power over people’s lives after the Civil War, removed the teeth of federal treaties, and gave illegal power to the States, I could SO see our Governor doing that. Heck, he’s doing it now, seeking to “renegotiate” tribal car tags, gaming compacts, and making highway signs of sovereign nations more “informational,” etc. etc.

While some might suggest sending him the box set of “Reservation Dogs” as homework, he would need some basic knowledge of tribal culture to laugh at the right jokes. There’s some question of whether he’s a paper Indian.

But I digress…

Whether we like it or not, the United States has been under the world’s microscope since its founding. The words of our Declaration of Independence inspired “version 2.0” in France, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (with a writing assist from Thomas Jefferson), which in turn inspired many nationalists in Europe in the 1800s seeking to end monarchic rule.

Our national dialogue about slavery was informed by many nations, and others have watched us as we’ve grappled with the consequences, and how we’ve addressed long-simmering issues of voting rights for women (1920) and native American citizenship (1924).

It’s always a sobering thought that my Cherokee Mother was born just a few short years after this. History is never far away if we choose to remember it.

While the aspirational words of the Declaration of Independence shout out that all men are created equal, we know all too well those high-minded words have never been fully embraced. Perhaps now, as our national demographics show us becoming a truly pluralistic nation by 2045, the words might finally become true.

After 269 years.

A drop in a bucket for peoples that have been on this continent for at least 20,000 years.

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