This is a beautiful history of Indigenous North Americans. It is a complete portrait of their history-- beginning with the rise of ancient cities to the challenges of Indigenous peoples today. I think what I liked most about this is the revision of Indigenous history. Native Americans were not passive victims of European colonialism. Despite challenges such as colonialism and assimilation-- they have kept their presence alive and navigated complex political/economical/social matters throughout their history.

I highly recommend this title for anyone interested in Native American history!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read and review an advanced copy of this novel. I highly enjoyed it and will be recommending it to others.

Native Nations: The Survival of Indigenous Peoples by Kathleen DuVal is a comprehensive and insightful exploration of the resilience and adaptability of Native American nations throughout history. DuVal skillfully examines the complex relationships between Indigenous peoples and European settlers, highlighting Native agency and survival strategies. This work is an essential read for those interested in understanding the depth and diversity of Native American history and culture.

This book is absolutely fascinating while also being depressing at how the Indigenous culture and history of this country was so whitewashed - I can't to get it for my OWN library.

This book presents a powerful account of Native sovereignty and resilience across North America. Highlighting the adaptability, egalitarian governance, and complex economies of Native civilizations, it shows how they evolved after European arrival. This chronical offers a refreshing perspective that places Indigenous power at the forefront of the North American story. The book is fascinating, enjoyable, and easy to read.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

This was a very enlightening and important read . This book definitely pushed me to do more research .
Thank you for the Arc.

A Native American history.
Native Nations was a revelation to me. This is an excellent resource for continuing educating professionals. It presents Native American history in relationship to European history on a similar parallel time line from Native American perspective. The complexities of several Native American cultures and interactions with contemporary European nations is considered in detail.are examined.

The complexity of NA policies compared to contemporaneous civilizations like medieval Europe and the power held over trade transaction is interesting. Remarkably the Native Americans kept their languages and culture, despite suppression by England, France, Holland and others.

This non-fiction tome describes the ignorance/arrogance of Europeans in American settlements; I was regrettably not taught history to reflect any view except Euro-centric. Though Native Americans were clever, astute and careful diplomats, in 300 years they were no match for greedy foreign colonial powers .
I feel better informed and a renewed shame for ignorant European-Americans and the federal government.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

This was an incredible read. I recommend this book for everyone living in what is now the United States of America.

AHHH! In my opinion, this should be required reading.

I am so thankful to Random House Books, Kathleen DuVal, PRH Audio (for the #Free Audiobook / #PRHPartner), and Netgalley for granting me advanced access to this vital piece of history before it hits shelves on April 9, 2024.

Kathleen DuVal unveils the past, present, and future histories of Native Americans and Indigenous peoples starting over 1000 years ago and projecting into our everyday thoughts and feelings towards these groups of people. DuVal touches upon regional tribes and their mainstays, cultural beliefs and traditions, and their warring patterns with other tribes and Americans, French, British, and other colonizers.

Indigenous peoples are an oppressed group and have been for as long as colonizers have been around. It's up to us to be better by them, pledging for change in policies and government funding, for we've always taken and taken what is not ours. DuVal provides critical context into the backgrounds and pivotal histories of these tribes and their people, making this a must-have educational tool for interested parties.

This is the part of American history that is missing from the history textbooks. The section that was most interesting was about Roanoke Colony, which I visited on a trip to the Outer Banks. The colony was settled by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1585. Five years later, the 120 residents had all disappeared. John White, an artist, returned to the area and established a second colony which in 1587 and the residents from that settlement also went missing. Archeologists now believe that the settlers joined the Native American tribes as personal belongings have been found near the site of the Native American villages. This may have been the result of trading, but the evidence is that the settlers lived in these villages. It's an eerie story but the most interesting part to me is that john White painted beautiful watercolors of the Native Americans and the fauna in that area. Its a large contrast to the harsh life that settlers must have experienced. There is a small museum on the site that contains his artwork.

This history took me many weeks to read, not because I wasn't enjoying it, and not because it was difficult, but because I WANTED to read it slowly. I loved the way the facts here speak for themselves. As I read I thought frequently about how different this history is from Howard Zinn. It made me reconsider Zinn and conclude that he was guilty of colonizer-thinking, himself, for the way Zinn saw history as the story of winners and losers, with the Native Americans being more or less hapless bystander-victims to their fate. Kathleen DuVal's history of Native Nations in contrast makes it so clear that Native Americans at every juncture were looking out for themselves--negotiating, fighting, and doing everything they could to protect their interests. It felt so right. It brought my historical understanding to a new level.

It's very unusual for me to give a book five stars (maybe two or three out of the one hundred and fifty I read each year. But this book is remarkable in what it sets out to be and meets every mark of a classic history. Beginng with pre-Columbus North America, DuVal spends a good amount of time explaining the major empires that arose on the lands that were to become the US>

DuVal gives a study of the tribes that made up the population of the US at 1.5 million, and hit a nadir of 250,000 in the 1910 census. If your looking for why there was this precipitous drop in the Native population, two words : the White Man. From the first days of colonists landing in the "New World" totally unprepared for the rigors of building cities on virgin land, they were helped by the Natives. In return the colonists never missed a chance to cheat the Natives out of everything they owned.

This is a true academic study that covers every major Native tribe and their forced evacuations from their original lands. It was more the taking of the Natives best lands and giving the Natives lands that couldn't be farmed that led to the decline of the Native population along with disease and starvation. The one positive addition for the Natives was the introduction of the horse which gave the Natives a mobility the never had before.

The forced relocation of Native tribes from the east and west coasts to semi-arid Oklahoma,
was to be the death-knell of the Natives, but they just wouldn't give up and protected the legacies of their ancestors. Today there is a resurgence of many of the Tribes helped by education and the protection of their heritage.

My thanks to both NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group- Random House for an advanced copy of the book of history looking at the life and culture of the native people of the Americas.

When I was in school we never really learned about the native people who were living in the Americas. Maybe discussions about land bridges, maybe a discussion about some of the nations living in Connecticut. I remember a field trip once to a museum, but I think that was about it. I do remember a lot about the idea of the noble savage, of Sacagawea and Pocahontas. This was before the Disney movie, so who know what they are teaching know. Later as my palette expanded I began reading a lot of history, and finding myself saying quite a lot, I didn't know that, I never learned that. And yet many of the achievements and accomplishments of the native peoples were still never discussed. I knew more about peyote from working in record stores than I knew about Cahokia mounds. Native Nations: A Millennium in North America by Kathleen DuVal is a book I wished I had read years ago, but feel lucky to have read now, filling in the many blanks I never knew about the indigenous people of America.

The starts 1000 years ago, explaining life in a variety of places in America, and how slowly these people were forming tighter and tighter and tighter units, that began to expand in the ideas of cities, and Empires. DuVal discusses how the rise of cites, using might, religion and trade to keep control and how with everything humans touch, certain people seemed to have more rights than others. One learns about the Cahokia Mounds and what they mean, and why these empires began to break-up, as smaller units could move, deal with food shortages easier, and just leave if disease or worse broke out. The book continues to the first meetings with Europeans, the expansion of America, up until the the present day. The book is told in a chronological order, covering events as times pass, with each chapter ending in a personal way, tying in events to the present day.

I really enjoyed this book, and learned quite a lot from it. The layout is interesting, not focusing on one group, but covering the whole breadth of the continent. There is a of course a little more known about the nations that had dealings with the colonists, but the research that DuVal has done is amazing to think about. The book is very readable, written in a very nice style, explains and shows what life and culture were like for so many people. There is a little bit of humor in places that lift it from being a staid kind of history book. The personal touches at the end of the chapter are also a nice touch, in that it reminds readers that history is about people, what happened hundreds of years ago, resound in decisions and opinion, and actions today.

Recommended for history readers, especially for those who want a better understanding of America. There have been a lot of very good works coming out recently on the indigenous people, this is one of the best.

I wanted to like this book more but it wasnt what i thought it could be. It's ok to me. I guess i had higher hopes based off of the reviews.

I recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn more about Native history. This was by far the most detailed and inclusive book I've read on the subject. The author focuses on select tribes and follows their development in chronological order. I think this book is organized very well given the breadth of the subject matter. There are also extensive notes in the back so if you are wanting to learn more about specific tribes, the resources are right there. I also appreciate that the author takes events of the past and shows how they impact tribes to this day. It was a very enlightening read.

I was provided and ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

Through a combination of extensive research and a historical narrative that utilizes a range of selected Native nations as her examples, DuVal very successfully highlights the impressive resilience and adaptability that the indigenous peoples of what is today America employed over the course of centuries in the face of numerous changes and threats. European encroachment and settlement, and the assimilationist and eliminationist policies of the US government of course receive due coverage here, as I expected, but much more surprising was the coverage provided to the shifts and adjustments made by native peoples to accommodate climate change and also their always-evolving relationships with one another. As if that wasn’t enough in the way of an eye-opening mini-education packed into just one book, DuVal was able to spend ample time illustrating some of the great diversity and complexity that was present in the various native societies. And in case any readers at all run even the smallest risk of viewing all of this information through the all-too-common false narrative Native Americans as a vanished people lost to history, the author constantly connects indigenous peoples of the past with their present-day descendants who have never stopped adapting, resisting, exerting themselves culturally, politically and economically - and she does so with a dogged persistence that I not just understand, but greatly appreciate, especially in light of the widespread aforementioned misperceptions that DuVal highlights over and over.

In succinct summarization - I found this to be a wonderfully informative read! “Native Nations” is an excellent addition in its own right to any academic library, public library, or home library thanks to all that it has to teach. Likewise, it’s a great addition to the growing ranks of books such as Ned Blackhawk’s “The Rediscovery of America,” David Treuer’s “The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee,” and similar publications that collectively are gradually correcting a major failure (to say the least) of the historical educations for readers such as myself.

This is a fascinating book that effectively synthesizes modern scholarship about many different groups of Indigenous Americans throughout the last millennium. It can be pretty dense, but it's accessible to a non-specialist. There are a lot of comparisons to other civilization, which I didn't find super useful but may be good for some readers. I enjoyed the parts discussing Haudenosaunee-related violence, because I'd never heard that part of the story before. The more modern sections were less personally interesting, but still important. If you're interested in environmental history, it's worth reading this book for Chapter 2 alone, which addresses the differences between the western turn towards bureaucracy in opposition to the North American de-densification and rise of egalitarianism in response to the little ice age.

As part of a wider release of books that show Native America was not unpopulated at the time that Europeans landed in America, this book paints Natives as the protagonists, working with, and against, Europeans and Americans for their own ends. A book that provides a much-needed counterpoint to swathes of American history.