Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power

"He’s a Finnish historian who wrote a very interesting book on the Comanches a few years ago. This book, in a way, follows on from that. The Lakota are a culture within the Sioux indigenous people. Hämäläinen says that when we think of America, we tend to think of this big American Republic set up after the War of Independence (or their Revolution, depending what you call it). But he says there were actually two American nations set up at about that time. The other was the Lakota nation, set up by the aboriginal Sioux he then proceeds to trace. We know the history of the America that was founded in Philadelphia and then expanded in all directions, the movement West and the settlement of the continent. We know that there were Native Americans there, but they tend only to feature as a more or less picturesque “adjunct” to the other America’s triumph. Too often we only know them through Hollywood movies about Custer’s Last Stand and perhaps about the final end at Wounded Knee. Hämäläinen has produced this book that studies the rise of the Lakota nation from the 17th century through to the 19th century. It’s an extraordinary story, because it shows a group of people forming their space, their culture, in opposition to the various forces that are lined up against them. These include the French, the British and of course the advancing people of white America too. You’ve also got other indigenous peoples fighting and sparring for territory. “We’re interested in consequences and ways forward and developing an understanding that is not limited to reciting moral or political pieties” What he shows is the way this Lakota nation emerges in the area south of the Great Lakes, in “the Black Hills of South Dakota” as he puts it, and then absorbs and accommodates various other peoples approaching it from outside. It’s a story of enormous flexibility, of continuing adjustment, as well as of murderous fighting and even cannibalism. There’s terrible stuff that goes on, particularly in the early parts of this history. But what does emerge is a clear civilization: resilient, complex, capable of negotiation and its own forms of diplomacy and insight. Then, in later years, as pressures change and opportunities open up, the Lakota spread out. They move down the Missouri River in a more or less southern direction. They refound themselves and are no longer hunter-gatherers but reorganize their whole economy and society around working the river. Then, they move out into the plains, where Hollywood keeps them, mostly. They take to the horse and operate with the buffalo, a later history that we perhaps know better. So Hämäläinen has tracked the emergence and historical development of the Lakota nation, as he calls it, and he’s done so in what’s a quite detailed and sometimes quite dizzying survey, because you enter a world you don’t know anything about—well, I didn’t. You think you know the broad outlines of the story, and there have been some great books, like Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, that have explored elements of the story. And obviously the Lakota nation is still with us, so there are many people working with it and speaking from it and addressing its history. Yet this book is a really interesting reminder of the complexity, the dynamism and creativity of a nation that was defeated, in a fundamental sense, by the consolidation of the United State of America. He is partly in the hands of European witnesses and archaeologists – he seems to have looked at relics in every glass case imaginable! He also draws on these intriguing calendars called “winter counts”, which are pictographic records of the tribe’s experiences. Often a whole century is registered in a spiral on a single buffalo hide. So there is some remaining registration of the history that survives from within that world. There are, though, things that remain invisible. One of our judges said, ‘I wish I knew more about the women of this world’ and you could guess with some confidence that’s what the author wishes too. The record doesn’t give him everything. But he’s done incredibly well with what it does give us. The book is already causing quite a lively discussion in North America. Fewer readers in Britain, perhaps, are so well attuned to this history. It’s a good book, partly because Hämäläinen uses his expertise without entirely forgetting that his readers probably don’t share it. They need somebody to take them on the journey with some respect for the fact they’re in territory they don’t know already, and he’s quite good at that."