Native Nations

University of North Carolina history professor Kathleen DuVal, recipient of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for History, asserts that United States history must centralize Native Americans’ perspectives and contributions – including their 20th- and 21st-century renaissance and revitalized languages, cultures, and political power.

Complex Societies

Long before European contact, Indigenous civilizations established economies, networks of diplomacy, and political structures. By the time of “discovery,” they had built cities and employed technologies that rivaled Europe’s. After the advent of Europeans, Native Americans constrained colonial expansion for centuries. Indigenous demands for rights and sovereignty enabled North America’s Native nations to thrive.