♪ ♪ ♪ (theme music playing) ♪ RUBENSTEIN: Hello, I'm David Rubenstein.

I'm gonna be joined in conversation today with Ned Blackhawk, who is the author of, “The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of US History.” Uh, Professor Blackhawk is a professor of history and American studies at Yale University.

And this book has recently won the National Book Award for Best Nonfiction Work of 2023.

So, thank you very much for coming here.

And, uh, were you surprised that you won the National Book Award?

Or you knew you were gonna get it?

BLACKHAWK: Um, I was delighted, uh, but surprised even more.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, so it's called, “The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of US History.” Why do we need to, uh, rediscover America and unmake US history?

What's wrong with US history as we had it before?

BLACKHAWK: Well, if you were to turn to the first page of the, uh, volume, you might see that there is a claim that, uh, we have not really fully recognized, uh, the history of the United States in the fullest capacity that we could, um, and to do so requires, uh, certain unmaking of existing paradigms, but also, uh, an invitation to join a generation of scholars who have rediscovered American history.

So, the title is really a recognition of, a incredible outpouring of scholarly and tribally, organized efforts that have fundamentally recreated new visions of the new American past.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So for the uninitiated is it appropriate to say Native Americans or Indians?

What is the preferred, uh, nomenclature?

BLACKHAWK: I used the term Native Peoples in the subtitle.

Um, and interchangeably use American Indians and Native Americans throughout.

These are some of the oldest, both political, racial, and legal terms in America.

Uh, so it, it's hard to totally abandon one in favor of the other.

RUBENSTEIN: How many Native Peoples are there in the United States today?

BLACKHAWK: Several million, according to census numbers, uh, roughly four to six million self-identified American Indians.

RUBENSTEIN: When did Native Americans or Native Peoples first come to this continent?

They came presumably over the land bridge from Asia, is that true?

BLACKHAWK: There are archeological revisions to this narrative fairly consistently and regularly.

So it's hard to precisely, uh, identify the exact temporal origins of the “Peopling of the Americas,” as it's called.

Uh, but there are estimates that between roughly 15,000 to 35,000 years ago BP, or before present, Native Peoples did begin this process.

A lot of Native American communities don't generally, uh, see themselves in these terms because that narrative of temporality is so vast and often so uncertain, uh, that it serves to sometimes dis... distance Native Peoples from their rightful, uh, homelands and claims to them.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, well, in 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered America, right?

BLACKHAWK: Um... RUBENSTEIN: It wasn't here before he came over and discovered it.

Uh, and he didn't actually get the North America.

But when he came over, how many Native Americans would you say there were in, let's say North America or South America then?

BLACKHAWK: Well, there's as many people in the Americas as there were in Europe at the time of Columbus's departure.

Um, and so, there are roughly 72 to 80 million, uh, humans across the Western Hemisphere.

The vast majority of them are not in North America.

But North America had between 8 to 12 million, I think I used the term 7 to 8 is the most kind of commonly accepted scholarly, uh, estimate.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, when the Western settlers came over, the people from Britain, let's say, um, they landed in, inland in North America.

Did they say, "This is our land because the king gave it to us"?

How did that work?

BLACKHAWK: Um, well the pilgrims are relatively latecomers to the American, uh, settlement process.

Though we think of them as the first pioneers so to speak.

Um, we've been in many ways, uh, miseducated about the history of our country, uh, by its fairly exclusive focus on, if not exclusively English settlers, but New England settlers.

And the New England settlers are much more distinctive than any of the other settlers in the Americas, uh, writ large.

Uh, they have relatively, uh, even gender ratios.

They have commitments to higher education.

They are, politically, kind of pluralistic in a certain way.

RUBENSTEIN: Right.

BLACKHAWK: Uh, so they are not like the other colonial worlds that formed across the Americas.

RUBENSTEIN: But, at one point, we have a number of British colonies in, uh, the eastern part of what's now the United States.

BLACKHAWK: Right.

RUBENSTEIN: And then there was a war started called The French-Indian War.

BLACKHAWK: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: Um, what was The French Indian War all about?

BLACKHAWK: The 1750s, the 1760s, and the 1770s really birthed the American republic as we now know it.

But we've been only largely taught the 1760s and 1770s part of that.

This war, which starts in the 1750s, is, according to a very famous colonial historian named Fred Anderson, the most important war of the 18th century, the Seven Years' War, which erupts in the interior of North America, spreads the next year, um, across the colonies.

It reaches Europe.

It reaches the Caribbean.

France and England are fighting essentially all around the world.

The Spanish get dragged in as French allies.

They lose as well, and by the end of this war in 1760s, uh, North America, essentially east of the Mississippi is all claimed by the British crown relatively speaking.

This war then reconfigured the entire political geography of European claims on eastern North America.

And thereby set in motion a lot of the tensions between the British crown and its own settlers that would ultimately lead to the Revolution.

RUBENSTEIN: So, when The French Indian War, uh, was over.

Uh, the British supposedly won.

And they then said, well, we now need to have more troops here to defend against the, uh, uh, Indians, the local colonies here, and we need to tax them because it costs money to have these troops.

So that began ultimately the Revolutionary War and all the fights about taxation so forth.

BLACKHAWK: That is a more thorough understanding of the causes of the Revolution than many have been, uh, provided, but one of the slight, revisions might be that the British are actually demobilizing their, their army, but they're using the taxes to pay for the war that they just had.

And so, one of the big challenges after 1763 and the Treaty of Paris is to keep this interior world that the French had once governed away from the colonists.

And one of the reasons the colonists ultimately are able to defeat the British Empire in North America is that the British have demobilized their army to such an extent that they really don't have a standing army in North America of much capacity.

RUBENSTEIN: Well, when the colonies decided to fight the Revolutionary War, where were the American Indian's so-called?

Were they fighting for the British?

Were they fighting for the colonies?

Were they just standing by their side and waiting to see who won, what were they doing?

BLACKHAWK: Uh, they were doing all the above.

RUBENSTEIN: All the above.

Okay.

BLACKHAWK: Uh, so there were tribes who were allied with the British.

There were tribes, uh, tribes who were fighting against the, the colonists.

Uh, there, or fighting with the colonists.

And there were many who thought they could stay neutral throughout the, the conflict itself.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, after the Revolutionary War is won, the Treaty of Paris in 1783 sets up, uh, basically the, that the way the colonies are gonna be living.

But they have a Articles of Confederation, which doesn't work so well, so ultimately they have a constitution.

BLACKHAWK: Right.

RUBENSTEIN: The Constitution, does it mention American Indians in the Constitution?

BLACKHAWK: It does.

The Constitution does two very important things regarding American Indians.

It excludes them from the reputational proportionment that, uh, the colonies are using to determine their own... RUBENSTEIN: And slaves were count as three-fifths of one person.

BLACKHAWK: Correct.

Indians are... RUBENSTEIN: Indians weren't counted at all.

BLACKHAWK: Indians are considered not taxed, and, and thus not subject to the jurisdiction of state governments.

But the most important part of the Constitution is the provision in Article I, Section 8, known as “The Commerce Clause” that locates the power of the federal government to be the exclusive arbiter of Indian affairs.

That's only five words in the Constitution.

Uh, but those are the five most important words in the American Indian legal history.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So what do the colonies do?

They, they now have the states.

They're not colonies, more they're states.

And are the Indians being driven from the east coast to the west?

Is that Andrew Jackson who started that?

BLACKHAWK: Um, Jackson is the seventh President of the United States.

He's the first who's not born in either Virginia or Massachusetts, which are the largest, colonies to begin with.

He's the first from this interior world of the Trans-Appalachia West.

He makes Indian removal one of the legislative centerpieces of his first administration.

No prior president had been that committed to the systematic process.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, there were treaties with the Indians, Native Americans, that the states had entered into from time to time.

But Andrew Jackson didn't really wanna honor those, I guess.

So he basically said to a lot of the Native Americans, "You gotta move west," is that correct?

BLACKHAWK: Um, that's what he would say during the State of the Union Address.

That's what the Indian Removal Act of 1830s, uh, indicated.

But tribes and also their allies fought those processes.

RUBENSTEIN: But he didn't just try to remove them.

He sometimes just tried to kill them, is that right?

They just basically send the army in to kill them?

BLACKHAWK: Well, um, he, he used the federal military to forcibly remove Indigenous Peoples, less than the kind of, what we might use, the term genocidal, uh, process, but in a long-term process of forced ethnic cleansing.

RUBENSTEIN: So, as the US is expanding westward.

BLACKHAWK: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: Um, the problem is from the point of view of the colonies or the states, the Indians are often in the territories that the, uh, the British or the Americans wanna expand to.

So, is that where you saw a lot of the wars going on, the fighting over territory with the Indians?

And who...

Were, were treaties that we entered into and we didn't, uh, honor them?

Or, or the Indians didn't honor the treaties?

What happened?

BLACKHAWK: The treaties helped build America in a way that we have yet to really realize.

Because the challenges the federal government has is having in the 19th century of incorporating western land are so intensive between the North and the South that they require a form of federal, uh, territorial incorporation that the treaties ultimately set in motion or help provide.

So the federal government is in these western regions, setting up, uh, counsels and diplomatic gatherings of the Indigenous People so that they can receive title to their land.

And once it becomes titled and-or incorporated into their, uh, jurisdiction or sovereignty, then reservations are established within them, but there's nothing inherently violent occurring at that time.

But the violence comes later when settlers come to these regions and often violate those provisions, or when the federal government itself doesn't subsidize it, or when Indigenous Peoples feel that they would rather live outside these jurisdictions.

RUBENSTEIN: So, when the Civil War came.

BLACKHAWK: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: Where were the American Indians?

Were they on the northern side or the, uh, southern side?

Were they Confederates or they were the Union?

What were they doing?

BLACKHAWK: Again, uh, both.

There are, um, particularly in the territory of Oklahoma at the time, um, large Indian, uh, companies that are formed, um, uh, as part of the Confederacy's enlistment or mobilization of, able-bodied men, in part because the Confederacy has forced these nations, many of whom had been removed from the South, to join their cause.

RUBENSTEIN: So some of these southern, uh, Indians were fighting for the?

BLACKHAWK: For the Confederacy.

RUBENSTEIN: For the Confederacy.

BLACKHAWK: And the last, uh, Confederate general to surrender is a Cherokee, uh, general by the name of Stand Watie.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, um, one of the most famous fights is the fight at Little Big Horn.

BLACKHAWK: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: What was, what was all that?

Was General Custer trying to recapture land that was owed and owned by the Americans?

Or what was he doing?

BLACKHAWK: After the Civil War, uh, the federal government, um, keeps a large standing army, relatively speaking, until the end of Reconstruction in 1876 and the Western theater becomes the primary, uh, arena of military practices of the American state for nearly 30 years, from roughly 1868 to 1898.

Uh, the federal government will almost exclusively fight Indians if it's using its military.

So ambitious officers from West Point or, uh, elsewhere, who want to serve in the military and gain recognition, power, prestige, authority in those capacities are drawn to Indian affairs.

Custer's one of them.

He is trying to enforce a return of Lakota tribesmen and citizens back to the reservation, which was created by treaty in 1868.

They are dissatisfied with that commitment because the federal government has broken it.

And so, they have left the reservation to return to their Montana hunting grounds where Custer and the 7th Cavalry encounter them at Little Big Horn just days before the American republic celebrates its 100th anniversary.

And so, the real news of 1876, in July 1st, is not the Philadelphia Centennial about to open in Philadelphia; the arrival of the Statue of Liberty's torch and all these kind of celebratory things.

It's the defeat of the most promising cavalry officer in our country.

RUBENSTEIN: So, did the American government say, "Well, we got, we lost the battle so bad?” Or did they send massive amounts of new troops in to beat the Indians who beat General Custer?

BLACKHAWK: Um, the latter.

But they did the former during a previous war in the 1860s called Red Clouds War in Montana, which set in motion the treaty.

So, many of the kind of dramatic military encounters with Indians often either proceeded or followed these dramatic treaty agreements.

RUBENSTEIN: Right.

So the Indians are living in let's say the Midwest or Western parts of the country, largely driven thereby, uh, Western expansion by the, the states.

Are a, uh, their economy self-contained?

Or are they trading among themselves or are they creating their own products and services?

Or are they doing trading with the, the, the states?

BLACKHAWK: It depends really which, uh, seasonal economy one would identify.

But in many places, like the upper Midwest, places like rural Minnesota or Wisconsin or Michigan.

In the Northwest coast and places like Washington State or Oregon, uh, in the interior Northwest, in places like Idaho or Western Montana.

Indigenous populations did maintain relatively self-sufficient economies well after the creation of the reservations.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

BLACKHAWK: The challenge, and this is the later parts of the book in the 19th century, the federal government having established reservations with tribes through this treaty process that the Senate ratifies, tribes then find themselves subjected to new assaults.

And the government decides to disaggregate their lands, to alienate them from communal position, to send their children to boarding schools, to impose Christianity upon them, and that's when their economies really fall apart.

RUBENSTEIN: So when you watch, uh, western movies of that era.

They're made in the '40s, or '50s, or '60s.

You see massive fights between the, uh, American, um, I guess military and the Indians.

Indians seem to have a lot of guns.

Uh, where'd they get the guns from?

Are they trading or are they manufacture?

Or how'd they get all those weapons?

BLACKHAWK: Um, well they got them from the Hollywood, uh, set designers... RUBENSTEIN: They didn't really, they didn't really have them.

Okay.

Okay.

BLACKHAWK: ...in the movies but, but historically speaking, Indians incorporate, um, uh, guns into their economies, um, more quickly often than do settlers.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

BLACKHAWK: Um, because they are so dependent on them.

And one of the real challenges of that reservation era that we were discussing is that the federal government, they prohibit them from not only carrying weapons but also riding horses, and so, all of a sudden, if you're dependent on hunting or, uh, traveling distances to feed your family, you can no longer do so.

RUBENSTEIN: Uh, in the 20th century, the United States fights World War I.

Do, do American Indians participate in that war?

BLACKHAWK: They do.

Approximately 20,000 American Indians served, uh, in the First World War.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

BLACKHAWK: Um, and many are doing so in part because, uh, Indians at the time are not citizens of the United States.

Um, and there are motivations for some to acquire political representation or recognition.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, during the earlier parts of the 20th century, um, there are large Indian reservations, and, uh, you point out in your book that, um, the education of young Indian children is one that is taken away from the Indians to some extent.

They're sent to boarding schools or kinda military-type camps.

So, can you describe what, uh, the education was like of Indians who were living in these reservations?

Were they forced to go to these education kinds of, uh, facilities, and did they really learn?

BLACKHAWK: Um, they had a design to them that was intended to do certain things that, uh, the schools ultimately did not yield.

So, the schools were established in the late 1870s, early 1880s, uh, with a small amount of congregational funding.

Eventually, it grew into relatively, um, I don't wanna say gargantuan, but, uh, at least continental-wide system of government-funded, uh, instruction that intended to kill the Indian but save the man, as the leader of the Carlisle School often said.

RUBENSTEIN: So it was designed to kind of integrate the Indian into American society?

BLACKHAWK: Right, it was kind of an assimilative designed Americanization program to incorporate Indians into the American body politic.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

BLACKHAWK: But at the same time, dissolve their commitments and capabilities of being tribal members.

RUBENSTEIN: Let's go to the Second World War.

The Navajo Code Breakers?

Who were they?

BLACKHAWK: The Code Talkers, or Code Breakers, were, um, distinct Indian military units that were formed by the government, or the military at least, to, uh, transmit sensitive and, um, military information in ways that, uh, enemy forces couldn't understand.

RUBENSTEIN: Explain that, in other words, the codes were understood only by... BLACKHAWK: Navajo or indigenous language speakers.

And apparently, Japanese had a very hard time, uh, with these.

RUBENSTEIN: All right.

So, after the war was over, were they honored for what they did, and did they get all kinds of rewards for that?

BLACKHAWK: They eventually would get recognition.

But, uh, the most famous American Indian participant in the Second World War veteran is a guy named Ira Hayes, whom you may not know is on the Marine Core Memorial.

RUBENSTEIN: I think he was the most famous, uh, Indian American that came outta that war, right?

BLACKHAWK: That's right.

RUBENSTEIN: Who held up the American flag from Mount Suri... Suribachi.

BLACKHAWK: Right, at Iwo Jima.

RUBENSTEIN: At Iwo Jima.

BLACKHAWK: But he suffered as did many, um, GIs, uh, uh, severe forms of post-traumatic stress disorder, and lived a fairly, um, difficult life afterwards.

RUBENSTEIN: So, let's talk about today.

Um, the Bureau of Indian Affairs is, is that in the Interior Department now?

BLACKHAWK: Yes.

RUBENSTEIN: And does that run... Indian reservations, what does it really do?

BLACKHAWK: Um, many things.

But the Bureau of Indian Affairs is the primary administrative unit that oversees the federal government's longstanding commitments and relationships with Indian tribes.

And so, if you think of these treaties, some of which predate the existence of the Constitution.

If you think of these treaties as establishing relationships and commitments of the federal government with tribal communities, um, the federal government has a fiduciary, legal, one might say, kind of moral or ethical commitment to maintaining these types of commitments.

RUBENSTEIN: So, explain why Indian tribes seem to own a lot of casinos.

How did they get their right to do that?

And are they very profitable?

Are they making a lot of money for doing that or not?

BLACKHAWK: You know, one of the beautiful things about, uh, American history and particularly Native American history are the kind of many surprising insights that the subject yields.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

BLACKHAWK: Um, we may all remember, the defunding of federal funding and commitments in the early '80s that David Stockton and other Reagan administrative financial leaders established, had an unbelievably, um, jarring effect on these longstanding federal commitments to Indian country.

In part because the Johnson, Nixon, and Carter administrations had made new funding coming out of the war on poverty and the office economic opportunity, available for tribes for the first time.

This is in the late '60s and early '70s.

Nixon is in fact potentially along with Delano Roosevelt, the most important kind of policy, uh, administrations for American Indians in 20th century America because they began policies and practices that helped tribes gain authority.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

BLACKHAWK: So the tribes were getting authority to, for the first time, break out of their relationships with the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

BLACKHAWK: They go to the office of, uh, Housing and Urban Development for housing authority, here comes money.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

BLACKHAWK: You could go the office of, environmental protection for new resources.

Also, new streams are coming into tribes... RUBENSTEIN: But how did they get the right to do casinos?

Why, why did they pick casinos?

BLACKHAWK: Well, if you're a tribal community leader who has now received, for 15 years or so, 20, maybe 10, grants, from the federal government that are now, um, gone or heavily diminished, and you have school that you're trying to run, you're gonna look for new resources.

They turned to black market economics for their, um, solutions.

They start using a gasoline tax, um, cigarette services, and eventually they start doing what a lot of their nonprofit, um, neighbors, particularly in southern American regions are doing.

They start running bingo halls.

So these bingo halls in the late 70s and 80s become essentially the seeds of what we call Indian gaming.

At the time, no one thought casinos were on the horizon.

And the interesting cases were the fact that the Seminole Tribe in Florida, they started realizing that churches and religious institutions around them were running, bingo practices.

They tried to do the same thing and sheriffs from Broward, Broward County shut them down.

They sued for, uh, for injunctions and all of a sudden that became a legal problem.

In California... RUBENSTEIN: The law ultimately said that it was okay to operate.

BLACKHAWK: Right, and they did so in part because they were small, what are called card rooms that are authorized by California municipalities.

So these legal, small, kinda seemingly inchoate initiatives start taking form when they, tribes start suing or getting active in this arena.

It makes it to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court says the states don't have the jurisdiction because the Constitution, to regulate Indian activities in these ways.

All of a sudden, new laws are needed to make gaming, uh, an effective practice.

RUBENSTEIN: So has gaming become so profitable for some Indian tribes that the economic challenges of certain Indian tribes or reservations have gone away?

Or it's still, it's gone to a relatively small set of people?

BLACKHAWK: You know, I, I don't talk about it and think about it in, often in these terms.

But I think it is fair to say that American Indian gaming is the most important or transformative practice in contemporary, modern American Indian economic history, and some of the solutions we were just talking about to these longstanding problems in part have been fueled by the revenue or the resources generated by gaming practices.

Many other entities have now also opened gaming practices.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

BLACKHAWK: There are casinos all over North America that are not just tribes.

RUBENSTEIN: So, if I wanted to be involved in gambling, I wanted to gamble, am I better off to go to an Indian-owned casino or a non-Indian-owned?

(laughs) Which are my better odds?

BLACKHAWK: I, I might be a, I might be a biased in this regard.

RUBENSTEIN: So, um, in recent years, there's been a lot of, uh, uh, uh, effort to try to change the use of certain names.

Like the Washington football team used to be called the "Washington Redskins"... BLACKHAWK: That's correct, yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: Before they changed the name.

The Cleveland baseball team used to be called the "Cleveland Indians," now called the "Guardians."

Do you think that those changes were appropriate, and why do you think it took so long to make those changes?

BLACKHAWK: You know, I was really struck that both of those things happened in my lifetime, to be honest, um, because of the, the childhood and the world that I came from.

I, I thought these things would never, um, happen.

But if one took a deep look at this subject one would see that American Indians have been concerned about these representations for really much of the late 20th century.

RUBENSTEIN: And you think there should be further, uh, changes made with other names or... BLACKHAWK: I am kinda biased in these terms.

So I would have, I would, I would, uh, point to the American Psychological Association, which has issued studies that highlight the negative impacts that these types of imagery have on American Indian youth development.

RUBENSTEIN: So for example, when, uh, Osama bin Laden was captured, the Americans who captured him radioed back, "Geronimo," or something to that effect.

BLACKHAWK: Right.

RUBENSTEIN: What was the offense by using the word Geronimo?

BLACKHAWK: Well, there is this kinda longstanding practice, um, in the American, uh, military, um, kinda iconography of associating, um, either enemy territory as Indian country or these metaphors in everyday life we use called, like being “off the reservation.” Um, there are these relatively negative associations around, um, Indians and kind of enemy combatants.

Similarly, there are often seen as honorific forms of, uh, recognition for things like, Black Hawk helicopters, Tomahawk missiles, and other kind of iconographies.

RUBENSTEIN: You think those should be changed, or you think that's harmful or?

BLACKHAWK: You know, it, I'm, I'm less concerned about, um, military practices in these regards.

But I do think, uh, the intense kind of, uh, militaristic association of Indians as violent or prone to violence is something that leads to these types of stereotypes or imageries.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, relatively speaking, there have been very few American Indians who have been serving in cabinet-level jobs, who are or get elected to Congress, or something like that, or governors.

Um, do you think that's changing?

BLACKHAWK: It is relatively recent.

Haaland is the first Secretary of Interior.

Tom Cole, Sharice Davids, she previously, and I think one or two others have, are also, uh, in Congress.

Um, this is a kind of rising tide of American Indian kind of political visibility in certain ways.

There's a kind of artistic transformation occurring in institutional settings.

American Indians are teaching at private institutions in the East Coast for the first time.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

BLACKHAWK: So, things are happening in, uh, in... RUBENSTEIN: Alright, do you think we will have an American Indian president before we have an American Jewish president, or you think the other way around?

(audience laughs).

BLACKHAWK: Um, I haven't thought deeply about the question.

But we, we may have a lot more in common than we realize.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, okay, maybe so.

Look, uh, your book is really well researched, well-written, and obviously, you know the subject matter very well.

BLACKHAWK: Oh, thank you.

RUBENSTEIN: Um, I highly recommend it.

And, um, I should say we're coming to you from the Robert H. Smith Auditorium at the New York Historical Society.

I wanna thank you for a very interesting conversation and I really enjoyed it.

Thank you.

BLACKHAWK: Thank you so much.

Thank you.

(audience applause) (music plays through credits) ♪ ♪