NATIVE RECONSTRUCTION

The ongoing division between southern and western history has obscured the deep connections between the political reforms of the Civil War and Reconstruction and Native America, connections that nineteenth-century Americans well understood and frequently discussed. The government used Indian policy to remake federal power in the mid-nineteenth century and to forge a unified nation-state that included rebellious southern and western peoples. Highlightening the relationship to domestic reforms in the South and expansionist policy in the West after 1865, the concept of Native Reconstruction relocates Native nations and the coercion at the heart of their relationship with the federal government in the history of Reconstruction. Reconstruction reforms not only took place in Indian Country, but they were also developed, tested, and reimagined in western and Native spaces. Native Reconstruction also helps articulate the importance of Native American history and policy to more traditional..

Also known as: NativeReconstruction.com