Ned Blackhawk

Ned Blackhawk is a Western Shoshone historian and the Howard R. Lamar Professor of History at Yale University. An enrolled member of the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone Indians of Nevada, he studied at McGill University, UCLA, and the University of Washington. His academic work focuses on Native American history and law.

Blackhawk writes historical nonfiction that challenges accounts of the United States in which Native peoples appear mainly at the edges or as obstacles to expansion. He examines encounters among Indigenous nations, European empires, and the United States, paying close attention to violence, treaty relationships, political sovereignty, and Native activism. Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West studies colonial conflict and change in the Great Basin.

The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History extends that perspective across five centuries. It argues that Native nations were central participants in the formation of the country, from colonial contests and the Revolution through removal, federal Indian policy, and twentieth-century campaigns for sovereignty. The book won the 2023 National Book Award for Nonfiction, the 2024 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Nonfiction, and the 2024 Mark Lynton History Prize.

New readers should begin with The Rediscovery of America. Its broad chronology makes Blackhawk’s central argument especially clear: United States history cannot be understood without the Native peoples who resisted, negotiated with, and shaped its governments and borders.