Native America: A History

The latest edition of an accessible and comprehensive survey of Native America

In this newly revised third edition of Native America: A History, Michael Leroy Oberg and Peter Jakob Olsen-Harbich deliver a thoroughly updated, incisive narrative history of North America’s Indigenous peoples. The authors aim to provide readers with an overview of the principal themes and developments in Native American history, from the first peopling of the continent to the present, by following twelve Native communities whose histories serve as exemplars for the common experiences of North America’s diverse Indigenous nations. This textbook centers the history of Native America and presents it as flowing through channels distinct from those of the United States. This is a history of nations not merely acted upon, but rather of those that have responded to, resisted, ignored, and shaped the efforts of foreign powers to control their story.

This new edition has been comprehensively updated in all its chapters and expanded with wider coverage of the most significant recent events and trends in Native America through the first two decades of the twenty-first century. Native America: A History, Third Edition also includes:

• A survey of pre-Columbian North American traditions and the various ways in which these traditions were deployed to comprehend and respond to the arrival of Europeans.
• In-depth examinations of how Native nations navigated the challenges of colonialism and fought to survive while marginalized behind the frontiers of European empires and the United States.
• Nuanced analyses of how Indigenous peoples balanced the economic benefits offered by assimilation with the cultural and political imperatives of maintaining traditions and sovereignty.
• An accessible presentation of American tribal law and the strategies used by Native nations to establish government-to-government relationships with the United States despite the repeated failures of that state to honor its legal commitments.

Perfect for undergraduate and graduate students seeking a broad historical treatment of Indigenous peoples in the United States, Native America: A History, Third Edition will earn a place in the libraries of anyone with an interest in seeking an authoritative and engaging survey of Native American history.