I'm Jonathan Kapart and welcome to Kapart. On this Thanksgiving day, I want you to ponder this question from Yale University Professor Ned Blackhawk.

When and where does the story of America start, and who constitutes its central cast?

That is among the central questions he poses in his book, The Rediscovery of America, Native Peoples, and the unmaking of U.S. history.

In this encore presentation of a conversation first recorded for Washington Post live on April 27th. Professor Blackhawk explains why encounter rather than discovery must structure America's

origin story.

The importance of Native Americans in the formulation of the U.S. Constitution and what he hopes his students

and readers take away from this book. So back in January the post dubbed your book among the books to read in 2023 noting that it quote

invites us to reconsider our received stories what inspired you to re-evaluate the stories we've been taught

about Native Americans in the formation of the United States?

I've been teaching Native American history since 1999 and have been studying it for nearly all of my adult life.

And I've never ultimately felt sufficiently satisfied with not only many kind of commonplace

understandings of the subject that pervade the academy that exist in popular culture or are found in other institutional spaces.

But also couldn't ever sufficiently find a kind of common course book or a set of materials to make sense of some of the

unifying themes that expand across the many centuries of Native American history.

There's been since that initial moment of teaching, a profusion of scholarly and academic work in the field.

And I've been trying as best as I can to kind of stay conversant and

active in these conversations and felt the need to kind of bring it together in some kind of overarching

form that draws upon what I'm calling the Rediscovery of America an academic and intellectual

Rediscovery or unearthing that currently is underway among many scholars in the field.

Well, it's interesting that you use the word discovery or rediscovery

because in your book, you say encounter rather than discovery must structure America's origins story.

Explain what you mean by this.

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