Introducing "First America": How 250 Years of History Shaped Today's Political Moment

Summary

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Snap Judgment x First America: How 250 Years of History Shaped Today's Political Moment

Episode Date: July 14, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this special episode, Snap Judgment debuts the premiere of "First America," a new podcast from Critical Frequency and Pushkin Industries. Hosted by Rebecca Nagle (Cherokee Nation), "First America" aims to correct the American historical narrative by placing Native people back into the story. The episode explores the deep connections between indigenous history, the founding of the United States, and the current political climate—arguing that much of America’s foundational story, including the true motivations behind the Revolution, cannot be told without understanding Native history. Featuring historian Ned Blackhawk (Western Shoshone), it challenges listeners to confront erased histories, uncomfortable truths, and direct connections between past atrocities and current events.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Erasure and Erased Sites: Fort Snelling and Present-Day Violence

• Rebecca Nagle’s Journey: The episode opens with Rebecca visiting Fort Snelling, Minneapolis, with Nick Estes (history professor, Lower Brule Sioux Tribe) [01:24].
• Historical Layering: Fort Snelling is both a sacred site for Dakota people—site of concentration camps and genocide in 1862—and now houses ICE offices. Visitors frequently overlook its history, using the place for recreation ([03:04]–[05:02]).
• Modern Parallels: On the day of their visit, ICE agents shoot and kill Renee Nicole Goode for blocking a detention operation, mirroring historic state violence against indigenous people ([05:52]–[07:00]).

"The murder of Renee Goode and the history of Fort Snelling are actually inseparable. First of all, ICE is headquartered on the Fort Snelling area campus."
— Nick Estes [10:46]

2. Living History: Connections Between Past and Present

• Rebecca’s Realization: The project begins as a history podcast but becomes a real-time investigation into how patterns of state violence against marginalized people are repeated ([08:08]–[12:00]).
• Protest Voices: Interviews at a protest connect the silence around both historical and modern-day oppression ([09:09]).

"You cannot be quiet. You must stand up. Because silence is what allowed this to happen in the Second World War."
— Protester [09:18]

• Federal Land and Legacy: ICE’s presence on federal land is a direct legacy of land seized via treaties to build military outposts ([11:01]).

3. Erasure from the Narrative: Native People and the Declaration of Independence

• Rewriting American Origin Stories: The episode pivots to examining the Declaration of Independence in its 250th anniversary year—and its infamous reference to Native Americans as “merciless Indian savages” ([15:59]).
• The Real Motivation for Rebellion: Historian Ned Blackhawk argues that, contrary to popular narrative, the Revolution was fundamentally driven by land hunger and anti-Indigenous sentiment—not just “taxation without representation” ([18:09]–[28:09]).

"He has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages..."
— Declaration of Independence, read by Revolutionary War Reenactor [15:59]

"This vision of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for mankind—the first time mankind is being articulated that I'm aware of, is in deeply anti-indigenous settings."
— Ned Blackhawk [27:32]

4. Pontiac’s War and the Proclamation Line

• Background: Blackhawk provides context on Pontiac’s War (1763) and its impact—Britain, after a costly indigenous uprising, chooses peace with Native confederacies and draws the Proclamation Line barring settlers from native lands ([19:15]–[24:04]).
• Colonist Reaction: Colonists, obsessed with land expansion and speculation (including George Washington), are outraged by this boundary. The first real shots of the Revolution are fired by settler militias (the Black Boys) against British troops over native land ([26:21]).

"Before the colonists are willing to die for lofty ideals like freedom and liberty…they are willing to die to stop the Crown from making peace with Indigenous nations."
— Rebecca Nagle [26:47]

5. Founding Racism & America’s Identity

• Origin of National Identity: Hating Indigenous people cemented colonial unity—evident in songs and rhetoric of the era ([27:07]).
• The Ongoing Cost of Erasure: The Declaration’s high ideals are built on a foundation of dispossession and dehumanization, rarely taught or acknowledged ([28:09]–[30:18]).

"If we don't understand the full context in which our nation was founded, we won't understand the full context in which our nation now finds itself."
— Ned Blackhawk [30:28]

6. Connecting Past to Present Authoritarianism

• Historical Continuity: The episode closes by linking current events—detention, state violence, silencing of dissent—to repeated patterns in US history ([31:48]).

"We don't need to leave the United States to understand the horrors of authoritarianism. It's right here in our own history."
— Rebecca Nagle [31:48]

• The Need for Full History: Without confronting these foundational truths, the “American story” remains fatally incomplete ([31:46]–[34:29]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Nick Estes, on Fort Snelling:
  "This is a sacred site for Dakota people which was later appropriated by the US Military to build their fort." [02:11]

• On Indigenous Erasure:
  "What democracy rounds an entire ethnic group up at gunpoint and puts them into a concentration camp? Not a strong democracy—not even a democracy."
  — Rebecca Nagle [34:13]

• On Present-Day Parallels:
  "It's not a new thing. This is what we've done. We're good at this."
  — Rebecca Nagle [34:30]

• On the Declaration as Comforting Myth:
  "I wanted to say something that is easily digestible, goes down smooth. I think we as a country are losing a real sense of understanding about our nation's past."
  — Ned Blackhawk (on Declaration of Independence shot glass) [29:47]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Fort Snelling Visit & History: [01:24]–[05:02]
• Modern ICE Violence / Protest: [05:52]–[11:04]
• Realization—History Reflected in Present: [11:46]–[12:00]
• Context: Pontiac's War & Proclamation Line: [19:15]–[24:04]
• The Black Boys and Settler Violence: [26:01]–[27:32]
• Declaration of Independence Analysis: [15:59]–[18:09]
• Interview with Ned Blackhawk: [18:09]–[30:42]
• Present-Day Reflection and Final Themes: [31:27]–[34:29]

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Episode Tone & Language

• Rebecca Nagle: Urgent, personal, reflective, at times angry but always searching; determined to confront and make visible erased truths.
• Ned Blackhawk: Scholarly yet passionate, unflinching in surfacing uncomfortable facts, wry and self-aware.
• Nick Estes: Grounded, direct, mournful, connecting the local to the national.
• Protesters/Locals: Emotional, candid, sometimes uncomfortable with history but open to its relevance.

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Summary Takeaway

This premiere episode of First America—debuted via Snap Judgment—uncovers how the core American origin story is built on the dispossession and erasure of Native people. By re-centering indigenous perspectives, the episode exposes how the drive for land, not abstract ideals of freedom, incited the Revolution, and how the logics of colonial violence remain deeply embedded within modern institutions and actions. Without acknowledging these truths, the story of America remains not only incomplete but fundamentally untrue.

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Transcript

[Glenn]

Hey, Snappers, it's Glenn. And at Snap, you know, we love sound rich, deeply human stories. And that's why I think you're gonna really enjoy today's episode, the debut of First America, the brand new history podcast from Critical Frequency and Pushkin Industries. Hosted by award winning journalist Rebecca Nagle and featuring leading native historians, First America explores how Native people have been left out of the American story. And without them, the American story is wrong. From the Declaration of Independence to the Founders, real motivations for rebellion and the government they built, First America reveals the true story of the founding of the United States and how today's political movement has been 250 years in the making. In this premiere episode, Rebecca sits down with Ned Blackhawk, who is Western Shoshone and a leading scholar of indigenous history, to explore why the drive to seize indigenous land, not taxation without representation, fueled the American Revolution. And before we play this eye opening conversation, be sure to follow First America on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Now here's the episode.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Where do you want us to park? Should we park right here?

[Nick Estes]

I think you have to park in here.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The fort is that way.

[Nick Estes]

Yeah, the fort's that way.

[Rebecca Nagle]

On a cold day in January, I visited Fort Snelling in Minneapolis. I was there with my friend Nick Estas. He's a history professor at the University of Minnesota and a citizen of the Lower Burl Sioux tribe.

[Nick Estes]

This is the historic Fort Snelling. Do you want to walk closer to it?

[Rebecca Nagle]

Can you just describe what the fort looks like?

[Nick Estes]

Well, the fort has a guard tower and then there's a wall that surrounds the entire fort. There's a series of barracks.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Next to the historic buildings are modern day trash cans. To let you know, this is a tourist attraction. School kids come here on field trips.

[Nick Estes]

This is a sacred site for Dakota people which was later appropriated by the US Military to build their fort. So look at that bald eagle. Told you we're gonna see one. Yeah, I wish the United States never appropriated the eagle. Do you hear?

[Unidentified Local]

Look at him.

[Nick Estes]

He's coming right towards us. I mean, I don't know, man. I don't know how you can't believe in the power of this stuff because those things happen for a reason. Told you we were gonna see one.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The history of what happened at Fort Snelling is significant to the Dakota people and that history is acknowledged at the site. But you have to go and find it.

[Nick Estes]

There's like a healing site right over here.

[Rebecca Nagle]

It's next to an underpass down a long Set of stairs on the edge of the woods. Can you describe what the memorial looks like?

[Nick Estes]

Yeah. So it's like a camp circle, but in the center, it looks like there's prayer ties, sage, tobacco, etcetera, Wrapped in cloth. And they're also prayer ties in the trees that surround us.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Who do you think left the prayer ties in the trees?

[Nick Estes]

I'm assuming it's the descendants of those who experienced that genocide.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Over 1600 Dakota people were held here during the winter of 1862.

[Nick Estes]

This is the area actually where the concentration camp was actually at Dakota. People, people who dared to stand up to the United States were put into a concentration camp, and all kinds of atrocities happened.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The concentration camp was just one part of a broader campaign to expel all Dakota people from the state of Minnesota. The campaign also included death marches, massacres bounties placed on indigenous heads, open air prisons, and mass executions.

[Nick Estes]

There was a lot of malnutrition, purposeful starvation. There were reports of women being raped and violated. You know, it's a site of horrors.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Do you think most people who come to this spot, do you think that they come here to honor the atrocity that happened here?

[Nick Estes]

No. They're doing winter sports, recreation. I mean, you can see right here, you can see these parallel tracks. People cross country ski through this area.

[Rebecca Nagle]

While we were standing there, some hikers walked by.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

Hi.

[Ned Blackhawk]

Hello.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Walking around Fort Snelling with Nick, it felt like this perfect metaphor for our country, all our terrible history. It's there. We just don't know how to talk about it. This all started as a conversation between Nick and me about four years ago. We were frustrated. Well, I was pissed at how native people are erased from the story of America. We wanted to tell the history of the United States with native people written back in. I wanted to correct the record. I should just go up here.

[Revolutionary War Reenactor]

Okay.

[Rebecca Nagle]

I need a birch. When we were in the car, Nick's phone rang.

[Protester/Participant]

I'm gonna.

[Nick Estes]

My wife called me. Somebody got shot.

[Rebecca Nagle]

He pulled up the news on his

[Nick Estes]

phone breaking witnesses report a woman was shot in the face by ICE while trying to flee in central Minneapolis earlier that day.

[Rebecca Nagle]

A woman named Renee Nicole Goode had tried to block ICE agents with her car. An agent had just shot and killed her.

[Nick Estes]

Damn. The photos are really bad.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Oh, God.

[Nick Estes]

It looks like a deployed airbag is just covered in blood.

[Rebecca Nagle]

We parked and watched the video.

[Revolutionary War Reenactor]

Wow.

[Protester/Participant]

Wow.

[Rebecca Nagle]

That's awful. That's awful. When I was in Minneapolis last January, thousands of ICE agents were on the

[Nick Estes]

ground in, like, a residential neighborhood.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Federal agents had Been rounding people up, including children, and sending them to detention facilities. People were afraid to leave their homes. Parents stopped sending their kids to school. It's interesting, given what we were talking about this morning, of the history of Dakota. People being rounded up and violently forced out of Minnesota. When I started this project, I thought I was making a history podcast. I read books, I interviewed historians. I went to important sites. I traveled across the country. But then this thing kept happening. I would be in a place learning about America's past, and then the same thing would happen right here in our present. You're listening to First America, the true story of how the United States came to be and how our current political moment is 250 years in the making. From Pushkin Industries and Critical Frequency, I'm your host, Rebecca Nagle. Gohin Daoudong Jalakayetli Que en la citizen of Cherokee Nation. I didn't go to Minneapolis to report on ice. I had come to interview Nick. We just happened to be at Fort Snelling the day ICE shot and killed Renee Goode. I don't know about you, but I don't believe in coincidences. I canceled my flight home and stayed to report on what was happening. The next morning, there was a protest back at Fort Snelling because Fort Snelling is also the site of ICE's headquarters, the in Minneapolis.

[Interviewer/Listener]

I was curious why you guys came today, because, I mean, you know, someone was literally killed yesterday for standing up to ice. So is it scary to be here today, knowing the violence?

[Protester/Participant]

Yes, it's scary, and I'm angry, and the anger overcomes the fear. I have a good friend, and she lived in Denmark during the German occupation, and she has told me over and over again, you cannot be quiet. You must stand up. Because silence is what allowed this to happen in the Second World War.

[Rebecca Nagle]

How far are we from the historic Fort Snelling?

[Nick Estes]

Just right across Highway 62 here.

[Interviewer/Listener]

And do you know what happened there?

[Unidentified Local]

Oh, no, no. Don't ask me those kinds of questions. I'm not good with history.

[Rebecca Nagle]

It's a historic fort.

[Interviewer/Listener]

It's. Yeah, sorry to put you on the spot.

[Unidentified Local]

I mean, the reason this is all happening here is because of the ICE offices that are there, not because of the historic fort, but

[Interviewer/Listener]

the 4th and the 1860s is actually a concentration camp for Dakota people.

[Revolutionary War Reenactor]

Oh.

[Interviewer/Listener]

I'm just curious if any of that history feels relevant to what's happening now.

[Unidentified Local]

Yes, clearly. You know, but, I mean, our state, I mean, just. I. I. Yeah, I mean, what's. I mean, you watched that Video. Thank God that person was there taking the video on their cell phone yesterday so everyone can see what happened. You know,

[Rebecca Nagle]

after leaving the protest, I went back to see Nick Estes at his office.

[Nick Estes]

The murder of Renee Goode and the history of Fort Snelling are actually inseparable. First of all, ICE is headquartered on the Fort Snelling area campus.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Do you know if that's because it's federal land?

[Nick Estes]

Yeah, it's headquartered there because it's federal land.

[Rebecca Nagle]

And why is it federal land?

[Nick Estes]

It's federal land because it was once a military reservation from the Zebulun pike treaty of 1805. And that was a treaty signed between some Dakota leaders and the United States government to create a military outpost.

[Rebecca Nagle]

It's not just the same place. The same thing is happening.

[Nick Estes]

People are being hunted in their neighborhoods and their schools. Places that were considered sanctuary sites, such as hospitals and churches are no longer off limits. 150 years ago, they were hunting us down to kill us. And now they're hunting down immigrants to deport them.

[Rebecca Nagle]

While I was out reporting this project, a lot happened. ICE killed people in the streets. I watched a kid in bunny ears get detained. Our government abducted the leader of Venezuela and started a war with Iran. Analysts kept talking about the stages of authoritarianism. And I found myself asking this question I think a lot of people are asking, how is this happening? How is all this happening in the United States? The answers I kept hearing YouTube. Lonely white men, the economy didn't feel like enough. I started to wonder if maybe the explanation was deeper than all that, deeper than anything going on right now. I'm still trying to figure it out, but the more time I spend in the past, the more the present makes sense. Maybe the answer is in that history we don't know how to talk about. The first place I went on my quest to put native people back in the story of America was the Declaration of Independence. This year is the 250th anniversary of the signing of that famous document. And it made sense to me as a starting place. I mean, it's the most popular origin story of our country, right? But it turns out what I thought I knew about the Declaration was wrong. Native people aren't missing. We're there. We're one of the most important lines in the document, but somehow no one knows about it.

[Revolutionary War Reenactor]

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another.

[Rebecca Nagle]

A couple of summers ago, on a hot July day, this man in a large coat and A feathered hat, walked up a small set of stairs surrounded by Revolutionary War reenactors, bayonets, and the twin speakers of the park service's PA system. He began reading the Declaration of Independence.

[Revolutionary War Reenactor]

We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

[Rebecca Nagle]

At the time of the document's creation, a lot of people were illiterate and printing stuff was slow and expensive. So word spread through public readings like this one.

[Revolutionary War Reenactor]

The history of the present king of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries in usurpation.

[Rebecca Nagle]

I think of the Declaration of Independence like a breakup letter. Our founders are breaking up with George iii, King of England. And the Declaration is at part of every breakup, or at least every bad breakup, where you tell the other person everything they did wrong. If Thomas Jefferson and King George were having it out on the front lawn, Jefferson would have his finger in George's face, yelling, and another thing, for imposing

[Revolutionary War Reenactor]

taxes on us without our consent.

[Rebecca Nagle]

And so the Declaration is basically this long list of complaints.

[Revolutionary War Reenactor]

He has plundered our sea.

[Rebecca Nagle]

A lot of historians say that list

[Revolutionary War Reenactor]

has an order ravaged our coast.

[Rebecca Nagle]

It starts with smaller grievances, burnt our towns, and ends with the biggest ones

[Revolutionary War Reenactor]

and destroyed the lives of our people.

[Rebecca Nagle]

We've been told the American Revolution was fought over taxes and representation. But the last complaint, the thing our founders were most angry about, goes like this.

[Revolutionary War Reenactor]

He has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages.

[Rebecca Nagle]

There's a racial slur in the Declaration of Independence. Native people are called savages. Alongside those lofty ideals, our founders included their deep hatred for indigenous people, the

[Revolutionary War Reenactor]

merciless Indian savages, whose no rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.

[Rebecca Nagle]

In case you need a refresher, the popular story of the American Revolution goes like this. Britain unjustly imposed taxes on the colonists, and they got mad. Get rid of that. But every time they protested, like when they threw tea into the Boston harbor, the king just imposed harsher laws. The colonists started to see their king as a tyrant. Some started talking about independence. Late one night, Paul Revere rode his horse to warn militias waiting outside Boston that the British were coming. The next morning, the militia squared off against the Brits, and the Revolutionary War began. A year later, our founding fathers gathered in Philadelphia to write the Declaration of Independence. But for two and a half centuries, that document has been telling a different Story according to our founders, in their own words, what they were most angry about was Indians. How did we all miss that? Can you please introduce yourself?

[Ned Blackhawk]

Hi, I'm Ned Blackhawk.

[Rebecca Nagle]

I went to Connecticut to find out. And what's your tribal affiliation?

[Ned Blackhawk]

I'm Western Shoshone.

[Rebecca Nagle]

And what do you do, Ned?

[Ned Blackhawk]

I teach history.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Where?

[Ned Blackhawk]

Yale University. I was the first tenured American Indian to teach at Yale.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Wait, I just kind of want to back up, like, in the entire history of Yale. You're the first native person to get tenure here?

[Ned Blackhawk]

Yes, and I'm still the first. So the only tenured faculty member?

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

Yes.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Is it ever lonely? Ned wears a long ponytail and the kind of sweater you imagine a professor would wear. Ned and I have been talking about this history for years. He, along with Nick Estes and some other indigenous scholars, helped shape the idea for this podcast. I wanted Ned to tell me the story of why the founders hated indigenous people so much they put it in the Declaration of Independence. Ned says that story starts a couple decades earlier with this big, big war. Was it kind of like World War zero?

[Ned Blackhawk]

No. It is the first World War.

[Rebecca Nagle]

It started as a fight over who would control North America, and it eventually covered the globe. Great Britain won, and they got a bunch of land from France. This land spans from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico and from present day New York to Minnesota. The colonists are thrilled.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

All across British North America, colonists are rejoicing. Sermons are being offered in Sunday's pamphlets and almanacs are being written about land possibilities in the interior. And there's this kind of growing sense of shared kind of euphoria that the British government and the British Empire are not just the largest in world history, but also the most virtuous and or free.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Those celebrations come to a halt in the summer of 1763 when news spreads of an indigenous uprising. The land England took over from France is still controlled by indigenous nations. What England actually wins in the war in real terms is forts, about 13 forts stationed around the Great Lakes as a new Fort Boston town. England thinks it can push native nations around.

[Ned Blackhawk]

They don't listen to the native peoples. They don't trade with them adequately.

[Rebecca Nagle]

And that angers indigenous leaders. An Odawa chief named Pontiac forms a multinational indigenous military alliance to push back. But could you just tell me a little bit more about who Pontiac is?

[Ned Blackhawk]

Pontiac is an Adowa leader, and he's fallen into close affinity with a preacher whose Delaware or Lenape named Neolin. Neolin is the Delaware prophet. Pontiac is the political leader, and together they Start articulating a vision for the future that is transformative. They decide that they no longer want their followers to rely upon the goods of Europeans. And it's a process kind of similar to what the colonists are going through, but because once they start reimagining themselves in these ways, they decide that they're going to drive the English out.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Pontiac and his soldiers go around and attack British forts. One of those attacks was particularly brilliant. Some Anishinaabe warriors go to this fort in northern Michigan, as they often did, to trade. But while they're there, they pretend to play a game of lacrosse right outside the fort.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

And one ball makes it over the fence. And so they ask if they could kind of get their ball returned. And so the fort officials are opening the doors to return the ball that's been taken, and flood of warriors come in and destroy the fort.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Pontiac's military alliance attacks forts all over the Great Lakes region. Remember, England took over about 13 forts, while Pontiac and his alliance destroy eight.

[Ned Blackhawk]

They signal to the English that peace is going to be more costly than

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

war has been for you.

[Rebecca Nagle]

And another costly war for the Crown is a big problem. England is broke. Like, broke broke. That global war England spent almost a decade fighting. It was expensive. The Crown doesn't want to pay for another one.

[Ned Blackhawk]

And they decide, okay, we'll make peace with Pontiac.

[Rebecca Nagle]

And why would the king do that? Because, like, England is a global empire. So why wouldn't the King of England want more land in North America?

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

Have you ever been to India?

[Protester/Participant]

No.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

Have you heard of the Caribbean?

[Rebecca Nagle]

Yes.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

Okay. The English Crown governs millions of people around the world. The British colonists in North America are a small percentage of that. The overwhelming economic priorities that the British Empire has in the Western Hemisphere revolve around places like Jamaica and Barbados, not Virginia or Massachusetts.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Is that because Barbados makes the Crown more money?

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

Correct. Because Barbados produces large quantities of slave produced alcohol and sugar that can be consumed across the British Empire.

[Rebecca Nagle]

So in the interests of Britain, this global empire, peace with indigenous nations, makes the most sense. It saves the Crown money. It serves the Crown's interests to preserve peace. The King of England gives Pontiac and his confederacy what they want.

[Ned Blackhawk]

The proclamation line of October 1763 draws this perimeter along the crests of the Appalachian Mountains.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The Crown promises to keep settlers off their land.

[Ned Blackhawk]

So everything east is British North America. Everything to the west is to be reserved for the Indians, While peace with

[Rebecca Nagle]

indigenous nations serves the Crown's global interests. It angers the colonists because it takes from them what they want most, more

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

land Land mania, we might say, overwhelms the colonial system. Gentry leaders, people like George Washington understood that their lands were becoming increasingly less valuable. People like Washington and commanding their enslaved populations to help bring nutrient rich soils from the bottom of riverbeds.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Because the fields are so depleted.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

Because the fields have become so depleted,

[Rebecca Nagle]

people like George Washington made money from this thing called land speculation. They'd buy up land that still belonged to indigenous nations to sell for profit. Once indigenous people were pushed out the king's new boundary, it messed up their whole scheme. The boundary line angered regular and poor people too. People who couldn't afford to buy private property often squatted on indigenous land. Pioneers, frontiersmen, settlers, whatever you want to call them, were already living west of the king's line.

[Ned Blackhawk]

And there are numbers of settlers who are forced back east and they don't like it.

[Rebecca Nagle]

And there's this other thing about the king's concession to Pontiac. The colonists don't like peace. You have to understand that the colonists have been at war with indigenous nations for most of their lives. And now the king wants to make peace with their enemies.

[Ned Blackhawk]

In fact, the British are going to give them ammunition, they're going to trade with them, they're going to recognize them. Hey, wait a minute. Didn't we just fight with you to control this world?

[Rebecca Nagle]

To help cement peace with Pontiac, England arranges to bring gifts and supplies. This was how diplomacy between indigenous nations and European powers worked back then.

[Ned Blackhawk]

80 supply of mule trains are coming. Massive actually logistical undertaking if you think about it. At Pittsburgh awaits these traders who are going to take these goods to Pontiac's confederate.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The colonists organize a militia, basically a band of angry white men with guns, and attack the convoy.

[Ned Blackhawk]

The first shots of the American revolution are fired in March of 1765 when one of these backcountry militia groups known as the black Boys attacks a British force escorting trade goods to Pontiac.

[Rebecca Nagle]

They're not attacking indigenous people. The black boys are attacking British troops.

[Ned Blackhawk]

They say things like, we are willing to die to disrupt and destroy these relationships.

[Rebecca Nagle]

So before the colonists are willing to die for lofty ideals like freedom and liberty and independence, they are willing to die to stop the Crown from making peace with indigenous nations. And we know why they are willing to die for this cause, because they wrote a song about it.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

The black boys create an anthem and that anthem calls native peoples the enemies of mankind.

[Rebecca Nagle]

I asked Ned to read part of it for me.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

On March 5 in 65, their Indian presence did arrive. But when this property is designed to serve the enemy of Mankind. It's high treason in the amount.

[Rebecca Nagle]

What does that line mean?

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

It means that the British trading policies of supplying native peoples are supporting the enemies of not just settler society, but mankind more broadly. The Britain is committing treason not to the Crown, but to humanity as a whole. And so this vision of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for mankind, the first time mankind is being articulated that I'm aware of, is in deeply anti indigenous settings.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Hating indigenous people. Seeing us as less than human helps the colonists come together and form a unified identity. It helped them come together to fight for independence.

[Ned Blackhawk]

I do believe that the start of

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

the fall of the British Empire in North America began on the Pennsylvania frontier. The sense of lawlessness or essentially fashioning one's own self governing principles and practices. This is happening before in Pennsylvania, before it's happening in Massachusetts.

[Rebecca Nagle]

We teach the origins of the American Revolution as this drumbeat of violence and protest happening in Boston over Texas. But years before any of that, colonists are firing guns at British troops over native land.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

And to my knowledge, that black boys history that we've been discussing has yet to appear in any US history textbook. Why we can't tell that story is a mystery to me.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Before I left Yale, I gave Ned a present.

[Ned Blackhawk]

You want me to open this?

[Interviewer/Listener]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Nagle]

You may or may not want it.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

Declaration of Independence shot glass. Thank you so much.

[Rebecca Nagle]

What does it say?

[Ned Blackhawk]

We the people.

[Rebecca Nagle]

What to you does that shot glass represent? If we think about how Americans think about their history,

[Ned Blackhawk]

I wanted to say something that is easily digestible, goes down smooth. I think we as a country are

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

losing a real sense of understanding about our nation's past. The Declaration, which is full of these beautiful, beautifully rendered, you know, sentences and paragraphs about Enlightenment ideals, does also have this darker history to it.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Why is it important for the darker part of the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution? Why is it important that Americans know about it?

[Ned Blackhawk]

Well, if we don't understand the full

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

context in which our nation was founded, we won't understand the full context in which our nation now finds itself.

[Rebecca Nagle]

I'm mad that native people have been written out of the story of the Revolution, but I'm also baffled by it. I mean, it's kind of wild, right? It's not like you have to dig through the archives to find out that hunger for indigenous land drove the Revolution. It's right there in the Declaration of Independence, in one of our country's most famous documents, in one of the most famous documents in all of human history, but somehow no one knows about. Feels like a Magic trick. Like making a rabbit disappear into a hat. And when I started this project, that's what I thought. I was up against the pervasive and systemic erasure of Native people from US History.

[Revolutionary War Reenactor]

The.

[Rebecca Nagle]

I thought the thing people couldn't see was me, my community. And then I started to realize what's missing from the story of America. It's bigger than that. After I left Minneapolis, I kept hearing politicians say the same thing. What is happening right now in America is fundamentally un American.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

This is just so un American.

[Rebecca Nagle]

I understand where this comes from. It comes from the part of the Declaration of Independence we were taught the all men are created equal life, liberty and happiness part. But when we tell the whole story, the truth of how and why our country was founded, the present moment doesn't feel like a contradiction. Violently rounding people up, putting people in detention, even shooting anyone who gets in the way. Our government has done this before. Not once, not twice. Many times. We just don't talk about that history because it happened to indigenous people. I keep hearing people go to Nazi Germany or Putin's Russia to try and understand the rise of fascism. We don't need to leave the United States to understand the horrors of authoritarianism. It's right here in our own history. And if we want to root that authoritarianism out, we have to know where and how it started. If we think we can win by defeating one leader, it will be like pruning a weed. It will only come back stronger. I thought what was missing from the story of America was Native people. But then I realized without us, that story is wrong. What's missing from the story of America is the truth. I want us to know how we got here. Because without that, we will never find our way out. Coming up on this season of First America.

[Interviewer/Listener]

Are you guys big Chiefs fans?

[Ned Blackhawk]

Hell, yeah.

[Revolutionary War Reenactor]

Yes.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Chiefs on three. One, two, three.

[Interviewer/Listener]

Chief. I feel like that's gonna happen a lot.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Do Native Americans still exist?

[Interviewer/Listener]

Maybe.

[Rebecca Nagle]

I don't really think so.

[Ned Blackhawk]

So the entire plan for funding the federal government was acquiring indigenous land and selling it. You were running for your lives, and. And you saw behind you everything you knew being burned down.

[Rebecca Nagle]

What democracy rounds an entire ethnic group up at gunpoint and puts them into a concentration camp? Like, not a strong democracy, not a durable democracy. I would say not even a democracy.

[Unidentified Local]

It's not.

[Rebecca Nagle]

It's not a new thing. This is what we've done. We're good at this. If you like what you're hearing, please leave a review. It's one of the best ways to help listeners find this show. You can also support First America by subscribing or sharing episodes with your friends. First America was made possible by the generous support of the Henry Luce foundation and the NYU Yale American Indian Sovereignty Project. Additional support came from Indian Collective, First Nations Development Institute, Yhavia Tom of San Manuel Nation Borealis Philanthropy and Black Liberation Indigenous Sovereignty Collective. Our fiscal sponsor is Red Media. I dreamed this project into the world in collaboration with an amazing group of Indigenous scholars including Maggie Blackhawk, Fond du Lac Ojibwe Ned Blackhawk, citizen of the Timok Tribe of Western Shoshone Phil Deloria, descendant of the Standing Rock and Yankton Sioux tribes and Nick Estes, citizen of the Lower Borl Sioux Tribe. I Rebecca Nagle, citizen of Cherokee Nation, also reported, wrote, hosted and executive produced the show. First America is produced by Critical Frequency and distributed by Pushkin Industries. Our managing producer is Amy Westervelt. Senior Producer and Sound Designer is Brendan Baker. Our story editor is Audrey Quinn. Jules Bradley, Kim Netter, V. Petersa and Jordan Gas Pore are our producers. Our editorial consultant is Connie Walker, citizen of the Ookanese First Nation. Fact checking by Naomi Barr. Our partnership's director is Lindsey Crowder. Our Development consultant is Jenny Lawton. Our theme song is by Raven Chukan, who is Danae scoring by Laura Ortman, citizen of the White Mountain Apache Tribe and Raven Chacon. Artwork by Kelly Gonzalez, citizen of Cherokee Nation. The team at Pushkin is Greta Cohn, CEO Eric Sandler, Chief Strategy Officer Grace Ross, VP of Business Development Morgan Ratner, Director of Marketing Owen Miller, content delivery associate Ky Reposi creative partnerships manager Jordan McMillan, social media manager Brian Strabanek, Senior Analytics Manager and Jake Flanagan, Production Counsel.

[Glenn]

If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear the rest of the series, follow First America on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you're listening now. New episodes released weekly.