Ned Blackhawk

Ned Blackhawk's picture
Howard R. Lamar Professor of History and American Studies
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Ned Blackhawk is the Howard R. Lamar Professor of History and American Studies and serves as the faculty coordinator for the Yale Group for the Study of Native America, the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program, the Native American Language Project, the Henry Roe Cloud Dissertation Writing Fellowship, and, as co-director, of the NYU-Yale American Indian Sovereignty Project. An enrolled member of the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone Indians of Nevada, he is the author and co-editor of four books, including the award-winning history, Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West (Harvard University Press, 2006) and The Rediscovery of America: American Indians and the Unmaking of U.S. History (Yale University Press, 2022). His recent publications can be found in the American Historical Review, Reviews in American History, the New York Times Book Review, and The Art of Native America: The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection, while co-authored publications include a special issue of Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2018); a “Brief for Amici Curiae Historians and Legal Scholars” (2015) to the Supreme Court in Dollar General Corp. v. Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians; and the co-edited anthologies Indigenous Visions: Rediscovering the Legacy of Franz Boas (Yale University Press, 2018), which won the 2019 Modernist Studies Association best anthology prize; and Indigenous Genocides and Settler Colonialism, the second volume of the Cambridge University Press World History of Genocide.

Publications List:

Current Projects: The Rediscovery of America: American Indians and the Unmaking of U.S. History (Advanced Contract: Yale University Press, 2022)
Co-editor, with Ben Kiernan, Benjamin Madley, and Rebe Taylor, The Cambridge World History of Genocide (in 3 Vols. Cambridge University Press) Vol. II: Genocide in the Early Modern, Indigenous, and Imperial Worlds, from c.1535 to World War One (2021)

Published Books and Edited Volumes:
2018 Indigenous Visions: Rediscovering the Legacy of Franz Boas, co-edited with Isaiah Lorado

Wilner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018)
2018 Unfolding Futures: Indigenous Ways of Knowing for the Twenty-First Century, co-eds. with

Philip J. Deloria, Bryan Brayboy, K. Tsinina Lomawaima, Mark Trahant, Loren Ghiglion, and

Douglas Medin, Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Spring 2018) 2010 History of Native America (Prince Fredrick, MD: Recorded Books, 2010)
2007 Between Empires: American Indians in the West during the Age of Empire, Guest Editor, Special

Issue, Ethnohistory, Volume 54:4 (Fall 2007)
2006 Violence Over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West (Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 2006; reprint 2007; paperback 2008; Kindle 2010)
2000 The Shoshone, Nonfiction Children’s Book in the Indian Nations Tribal History Series, Herman

Viola, Senior Ed., (Austin: Raintree Steck-Vaughn Publishers, 2000)

Edited Series Volumes

Cambridge University Press Studies in North American Indian History, Co-Editor with Tiya Miles, Frederick Hoxie, and Neal Salisbury (joined in 2010; Series Concluded in 2018)
2018 Kealani Cook, Return to Kahiki: Native Hawaiians in Oceania (January 2018)
2018 Allan Greer, Property and Dispossession: Natives, Empires, and Land in Early Modern North

America (January 2018)
2016 Matthew M. Babcock, Apache Adaptation to Spanish Rule (October 2016)
2015 Kiara M. Vigil, Indigenous Intellectuals: Sovereignty, Citizenship, and the American

Imagination, 1880-1930 (July 2015)
2014 Lucy Murphy, Great Lakes Creoles: A French-Indian Community on the Northern Borderlands,

Prairie du Chien, 1750-1860 (June 2014)
2010 Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great

Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (November 2010, 2nd Edition)

Yale University Press the Henry Roe Cloud Series on American Indians and Modernity, Co-Editor with Kathryn Shanley, Joshua L. Reid, and Kim Tall Bear (Founded 2011)
2018 Kent Blansett, A Journey to Freedom: Richard Oakes, Alcatraz, and the Red Power

Movement (September 2018)
2018 Ned Blackhawk and Isaiah Lorado Wilner, eds., Indigenous Visions: Rediscovering the Legacy of

Franz Boas (March 2018)
2018 Christine DeLucia, Memory Lands: King Philip’s War and the Place of Violence in the Northeast

(January 2018)
2018 Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War (January 2018)
2016 Coll Thrush, Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire (October 2016) 2015 Joshua L. Reid, The Sea is My Country: The Maritime World of the Makahs (May 2015) 2014 Nancy Marie Mithlo, ed., For A Love of His People: The Photography of Horace Poolaw

(Washington, D.C.: National Museum of the American Indian Press/Distributed by Yale

University Press, June 2014)
2013 David E. Wilkins, Hollow Justice: A History of Indigenous Claims in the United

States (October 2013)

2013 Beth H. Piatote, Domestic Subjects: Gender, Citizenship, and Law in Native American Literature (March 2013)

Articles and Book Chapters

2021 “Internecine Indigenous Warfare: Iroquois-Wendat Relations, 1647-1652,” in Kiernan, et. al., eds., Genocide in the Early Modern, Indigenous, and Imperial Worlds, from c.1535 to World War One (Cambridge University Press, 2021; 7800 words)

2021 “‘A World Accustomed to Itself’: the Overlapping Temporalities of Genocide and Settler Colonial Studies,” in Kiernan, et. al., eds., Genocide in the Early Modern, Indigenous, and Imperial Worlds, from c.1535 to World War One (Cambridge University Press, 2021; 9000 words)

2020 “The Iron Cage of Erasure: American Indian Sovereignty in Jill Lepore’s These Truths,” in Roundtable Forum, American Historical Review (forthcoming)

2019 “Spaces for Expression: Art and Knowledge-Sharing at the Native American Cultural Center,” (co-authored with Summer Sutton) in Katherine Nova McCleary, eds., Places, Nations, Generations, Beings: 200 Years of Indigenous North American Art (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery Publications)

2018 “The Radical Potential of Native American Art History,” in Gaylord Torrence, ed., Art of Native America: The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art Publications, 2018): 52-61

2018 “Introduction: Franz Boas and the Indigenous Origins of Modernity,” co-authored with Isaiah Lorado Wilner, in Blackhawk and Wilner, eds., Indigenous Visions: Rediscovering the Legacy of Franz Boas (Yale University Press, 2018): ix-xxii

2018 “Unfolding Futures: Indigenous Ways of Knowing for the Twenty-First Century,” co-authored with Philip J. Deloria, Bryan Brayboy, K. Tsinina Lomawaima, Mark Trahant, Loren Ghiglion, and Douglas Medin, Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 147: 2 (Spring 2018): 6-16

2014 “‘An Age of Pictures More than Words’: Theorizing Early American Indian Photography,” in Nancy Marie Mithlo, ed., Horace Poolaw: Kiowa Photographer (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of the American Indian Press/Distributed by Yale University Press): 65-75

2014 “Toward an Indigenous Art History of the West: the Segesser Hide Paintings,” in Julianna Barr and Edward Country, eds, The Contested Spaces of Early America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014): 276-299

2013 “Teaching the Columbian Exchange,” Organization of American Historians, Magazine of History, 27:4, Special Issue on Pre-Contact America, 31-34

2011 “Currents in North American Indian Historiography,” Western Historical Quarterly, 50th Anniversary Special Issue, “The WHA at Fifty: Essays on the State of Western History Scholarship,” 42 (Autumn 2011): 319-324

2011 “Violence over the Great Basin: An Interview with Ned Blackhawk,” in Deborah and Jon Lawrence, eds., Violent Encounters: Interviews on Western Massacres (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011), 161-179

2011 “American Indians and the Study of U.S. History,” in American History Now, co-edited for the American Historical Association by Eric Foner and Lisa McGirr, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011), 378-401

2010 “Forum Essay on Brian Delay’s War of A Thousand Deserts,” Society for the
Study of the Early Republic (SHEAR) online forum, Nov. 16th, 2010 http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H- SHEAR&month=1011&week=c&msg=uVUNhGt6MuzzYjXM5jArxA&user=&pw=

2010 “Contradictions in Indian Art: Contemporary Native American Arts and the
National Museum of the American Indian,” American Quarterly 62: 2 (June 2010), 387-394

2010 “‘Dey Take Indian For Slave’: Visions of Enslavement in Marcus Rediker’s The Slave Ship and Barry Unsworth’s Sacred Hunger,” Atlantic Studies 7: 1 (March

2010), 27-32 (part of “Colloquy with Marcus Rediker on The Slave Ship: A Human History,”edited by Dennis Moore)

2009 “Recasting the Narrative of America: The Rewards and Challenges of Teaching American Indian

History,” in Gary J. Kornblith and Carol Lasser, eds., Teaching American History: Essays Adapted from the Journal of American History, 2001-2007 (Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2009), 217-223 (originally published in The Journal of American History, Textbooks and Teaching Forum, March 2007,1165-1170)

2007 “The Primacy of Violence in Great Basin Indian History,” in Journal of West, Special Issue on Native American History, 46: 4 (Fall 2007), 10-17

2007 “Swiftly Moving Currents: American Indian History and the Changing Complexity of the Lewis and Clark Expedition,” Introduction, Between Empires: Indians in the American West during the Age of Empire, Special Issue of Ethnohistory 54:4 (Fall 2007), 583-589

2007 “The Displacement of Violence: Ute Diplomacy and the Making of New Mexico’s Eighteenth- Century Northern Borderlands,” in Between Empires: Indians in the American West during the Age of Empire, Special Issue of Ethnohistory 54:4 (Fall 2007), 723-755

2007 “Native American Reversal of Fortune: American Indian Colonialism and Its Aftermath,” Review Essay of Charles Wilkinson, Blood Struggle: The Rise of Modern Indian Nations (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005) and Paige Raibmon, Authentic Indians: Episodes of Encounter from the Late-Nineteenth Century Northwest Coast (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), American Quarterly 59. 1 (March 2007), 211-218

2006 “The Road to a New Era of American Indian Autonomy,” History Now, Special Issue on Western American History, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American

2005 “Look How Far We’ve Come: How American Indian History Changed the Study of U.S. History in the 1990s,” Organization of American Historians’ Magazine of History, Special Issue on “The American West,” Clyde Milner and Anne Butler, eds., Volume 19:6, November 2005, 13-17

2005 “Confronting Indian Imagery in America: Resisting the Misrepresentation of American Indians, A Personal Story,” in Simon Ortiz, ed. Beyond the Reach of Time and Change: Native American Reflections on the Frank A. Rinehart Photograph Collection (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, Volume 53 in the Sun Tracks Series of American Indian Literary Voices), 27-31

1999 “Julian Steward and the Politics of Representation” in Richard O. Clemmer, L. Daniel
Myers, and Elizabeth Rudden, eds., Julian Steward and the Great Basin: The Making of an Anthropologist (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press), 181-201; previously published as “Julian Steward and the Politics of Representations: A Critique of Anthropologist Julian Steward’s Ethnographic Portrayals of the American Indians of the Great Basin,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 21:2 (July, 1997): 61-80

1995 “‘I Can Carry on from Here’: The Relocation of American Indians to Los Angeles,” Wicazo Sa Review: Journal of Native American Studies XI: 2 (Fall 1995): 16-30

Select Reference Works, Institutional Reports, and Legal Case Work

2015 “BRIEF FOR AMICI CURIAE HISTORIANS AND LEGAL SCHOLARS,” co-authored with GREGORY ABLAVSKY, BETHANY R. BERGER, DANIEL CARPENTER, MATTHEW L.M. FLETCHER, MAGGIE MCKINLEY, AND JOSEPH WILLIAM SINGER, “Dollar General Corp. v. Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians,” Supreme Court of the United States, 2015 (Opening Arguments heard, December 7, 2015; Opinion Delivered: “The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided Court;” June 23, 2016)

2014 Report of the John Evans Study Committee (Northwestern University, Office of the Provost, 2014, 113pp). Co-authored with Elliot West, Frederick E. Hoxie, Loretta Fowler, Carl Smith, Peter Hayes, Laurie Zoloth, and Andrew Koppelman.

2010 Navajo-Ute Trade Blanket Entry in Cécile R. Ganteaume, ed., Infinity of Nations: Art and History in the Collections of the National Museum of the American Indian (Smithsonian Press, 2010)

2009 500-word Ute entry in Dee Brown’s, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: The Illustrated Edition: An Indian History of the American West (Sterling, 2009)

2008 “Native Americans and the West: Introduction to the Everett D. Graff Collection of Western Americana at the Newberry Library,” Adam Matthew Digital Publications (4,000 words)

2007 Opechancanough (750-word entry) in Treaties with American Indians: An
Encyclopedia of Rights, Conflicts, and Sovereignty
, Donald L. Fixico, editor (ABC-CLIO, 2007)

2004 Foreword, Encyclopedia of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, eds. Elin Woodger and Brandon Toporov (New York: Facts on File, Inc., 2004), xi-xii

2003 17 entries on American Indian history and law in Dictionary of American History, 3rd. Edition, Stanley Kutler, general editor (New York: Scribners, 2003)

2003 Native Americans of North America: “History” Section, 2003 Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 1998 “Great Basin Regional Essay,” The Great Basin and Southwest, Volume 2, The

Gale Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes, (Detroit: Gale Research, 1998)
Select Book Reviews, Newspaper Columns, and Webpage Coordination/Entries
2019- Faculty Coordinator and Website Manager, Yale Group for the Study of Native America

Webpage (125+ bi-monthly entries provided, 2013-2019) http://ygsna.sites.yale.edu
2019 “The Dark and Firm Tracks of Colonialism,” Book Review of Manu Karuka, Empire’s Tracks:

Indigenous Nations, Chinese Works, and the Transcontinental Railroad (Oakland: University of

California Press, 2019) in Reviews in American History (forthcoming, December 2019)
2019 Book Review of David Treuer, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to

the Present (Riverhead Books, 2019), in the New York Times Book Review, Jan. 27, 2019
2017 Book Review of David J. Silverman, Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of

Native America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016) in the William and Mary Quarterly

(July), 417-420
2105 “The Struggle for Justice on Tribal Lands,” New York Times, November 25, 2015 (Featured

Guest Op-ed)
2014 “Remember the Sand Creek Massacre,” New York Times, November 28, 2014 (Featured Guest

Op-Ed)
2009 Book Review of Bray Delay, The War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-

Mexican War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008) in the Journal of Military History
2009 Book Review of Pekka Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press,

2008) in the New Mexico Historical Review
2008 Book Review of Christian W. McMillen, Making Indian Law: The Haulapai Land Case and the

Birth of Ethnohistory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007) in the Australasian Journal of

American Studies 27:1 (July 2008), 122-125
2007 “U.S. Must Return Land Seized in 1877 to Lakota,” February 28, 2007, Wire-Service of The

Progressive, distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Services to over 400 U.S. and Canadian

newspapers, picked up by a dozen regional papers
2004 Book Review of James F. Brooks, Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and

Community in the Southwest Borderlands (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002)

in the American Indian Culture and Research Journal 28:1 (2004)
2003 Book Review of Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America

(New York: Penguin-Putnam Publishers, 2001) in the American Indian Culture and Research
Journal 27:1 (2003) (Lead Review)

2003 Book Review of Martha Knack, Boundaries Between: An Ethnohistory of the Southern Paiutes

(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001) in the New Mexico Historical Review (Winter

2003)
2002 Book Review of Donald Fixico, The Urban Indian Experience in America (Albuquerque:

University of New Mexico Press, 2000) in the Pacific Historical Review (Spring 2002)
1999 Book Review of Devon A. Mihesuah, ed., Natives and Academics: Researching and Writing

About American Indians (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998) in the Western Historical Quarterly (Summer 1999)