First America on HISTORY This Week

If you are a listener of History This Week, you know that we examine the moments and decisions that have shaped not only history, but our perspectives on the world. There is a new podcast called First America that does something similar, focusing specifically on how the country's founders' treatment of indigenous nations and their resistance shaped U.S. democracy. As the United States reaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, First America asks a deceptively simple question. What if the story we've been told about the American Revolution is incomplete? We've learned that the revolution was fought over taxation and representation. But when you actually read the declaration, the last grievance is about Native people. He has excited the merciless Indian savages, it reads, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions. Why have indigenous people been pushed to the margins of the American origin story when they were so central to it? Alongside leading Native historians, First America host Rebecca Nagel, an Indigenous author and the former host of Crooked's This Land podcast, looks at the real story of why the colonists rebelled, what kind of government they created, and, crucially, how the forces that shaped America 250 years ago are still shaping it today. Here's episode one, where Rebecca sits down with historian Ned Blackhawk, Western Shoshone, and to talk about how hunger for indigenous land drove the revolution. You can find more episodes of First America wherever you get podcasts.