Native Nation (2024) by Kathleen DuVal

 Audiobook Review

Native Nation (2024)

by Kathleen DuVal

  I like my history books like I like my coffee... magisterial.  Native Nations won a Pulitzer Prize last year, which is why I looked up the Audiobook on the library app and checked it out.  The Audiobook version clocks in at over 20 hours, and it look me a couple of check-outs and months of waiting in between to finish up, but it really is a great gloss on the history of the Native People in North America.  DuVal's major scholarly achievement is blending part of the argument made David Graeber in The Dawn of Everything, where Graeber, drawing on other scholars, argued for the historical choices made by allegedly non historical peoples (pre contact Native Americans) and essentially postulated that the "contemporary" Native American political scene when the Europeans showed up was the result of a centuries old rebellion against the Cahokia regime in the area of modern day St. Louis, and a similar rebellion in a similar time frame against a different group.   The idea is that the Native American who made contact with Europeans were not ignorant savages, but a collection of peoples who had rejected the kind of hierarchy and consolidation that won the day in the "old world" lands of Europe and Asia. 

    Graeber offers this analysis mostly as a theory, but DuVal fills in that gap with actual chapters from actual Native American history- she goes all over the map, with particular highlights coming from the Southeast and Southwest.   If you read Graeber, and are looking to follow up his Native American supported arguments, this Pulitzer Prize winning history book is worth reading.