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The conventional telling of American history used to be painted in primary colors: a cheerful and triumphal narrative about an exceptional country. Over time, in at least some quarters, that telling became more complex, reframed around the struggle to make good on the promises of democracy. But even in that more nuanced narrative, Native Americans tend to be absent, as are their histories of struggle, survival, dispossession and self-determination.

In his new book, “The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History,” Ned Blackhawk, a professor at Yale University, confronts that absence. In its place, he offers a sweeping account of how Native Americans shaped the country legally, politically and culturally at every turn: from the earliest notions of self-governance held by British colonists, to the writing of the Constitution, to the westward expansion that would seed the Civil War and beyond.

-WaPost