What do you think?
Rate this book
Blood and Land
Blood and Land is a personal view of the success and achievements of Native North America, and of today's challenges. It is about why Native Americans, First Nations and Arctic peoples matter today and why no understanding of the wider world is possible without comprehending the United States and Canada through their original inhabitants.
This dazzling, panoramic account introduces a deeply complex story, of myriad identities and determined ethnicities - from the desert Southwest to the high Arctic, from first contact between Europeans and Native Americans to the challenges of Native leadership to-day. Instead of writing achronological history, King confronts the reader with the paradoxes, diversity, and achievements of Native North America - the astonishing ingenuity and supple intelligence that have allowed, after suffering centuries of violence and dispossession, a striking level of recovery, optimism and autonomy in the 21st century.
Beautifully illustrated and filled with arresting and surprising stories, Blood and Land looks well beyond the 'feathers-and-failure' narratives beloved by historians.
This dazzling, panoramic account introduces a deeply complex story, of myriad identities and determined ethnicities - from the desert Southwest to the high Arctic, from first contact between Europeans and Native Americans to the challenges of Native leadership to-day. Instead of writing achronological history, King confronts the reader with the paradoxes, diversity, and achievements of Native North America - the astonishing ingenuity and supple intelligence that have allowed, after suffering centuries of violence and dispossession, a striking level of recovery, optimism and autonomy in the 21st century.
Beautifully illustrated and filled with arresting and surprising stories, Blood and Land looks well beyond the 'feathers-and-failure' narratives beloved by historians.
672 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2015
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 3, 2019
I'm back - took me a while to get through this one! Blood and Land is essentially a history of Native North America, and covers both themes and geographical areas. King has embarked on a highly ambitious project collecting the diverse histories of both aboriginal peoples in the USA and First Nations in Canada.
Blood and Land is very much a kaleidoscope of peoples and issues. From the Cherokee in the East to the Navajo in the West, to Nunavut in the Arctic and the peoples of the Pacific Northwest, the reader is introduced to the diversity of aboriginal peoples on this vast continent.
King focuses on the ability of Native North Americans to successfully adapt to changing circumstances. He covers some of the legislative developments during the 20th century, as well as native activism. He further devotes chapters to Native American belief systems, languages and art and material culture.
King also covers injustices by white colonisers including cultural extinction, land removal and discrimination, and a lack of representation. However, although King is critical of how Native Americans have been treated, this book is still very much a western perspective into Native North America. I do think King has approached the topic with respect, however even co-writing this work of history with a Native American scholar would have added clout to the project as a whole.
In addition to this, I also had some issues around this being a highly fragmented account with a lot of information, names and movements. Blood and Land also doesn't include a lot on Native American women. It bothered me that this history ended very abruptly after 550 pages - I would have appreciated some sort of concluding chapter, as well as a brief view on today and looking forward.
All in all, a lot of impressive research as gone into Blood and Land, and the reader is also treated to some great photos. King has to some extent succeeded at the mammoth task of covering the diversity of Native North America, and I definitely feel that I have a better grasp of this subject than I did before picking up this book.
Blood and Land is very much a kaleidoscope of peoples and issues. From the Cherokee in the East to the Navajo in the West, to Nunavut in the Arctic and the peoples of the Pacific Northwest, the reader is introduced to the diversity of aboriginal peoples on this vast continent.
King focuses on the ability of Native North Americans to successfully adapt to changing circumstances. He covers some of the legislative developments during the 20th century, as well as native activism. He further devotes chapters to Native American belief systems, languages and art and material culture.
King also covers injustices by white colonisers including cultural extinction, land removal and discrimination, and a lack of representation. However, although King is critical of how Native Americans have been treated, this book is still very much a western perspective into Native North America. I do think King has approached the topic with respect, however even co-writing this work of history with a Native American scholar would have added clout to the project as a whole.
In addition to this, I also had some issues around this being a highly fragmented account with a lot of information, names and movements. Blood and Land also doesn't include a lot on Native American women. It bothered me that this history ended very abruptly after 550 pages - I would have appreciated some sort of concluding chapter, as well as a brief view on today and looking forward.
All in all, a lot of impressive research as gone into Blood and Land, and the reader is also treated to some great photos. King has to some extent succeeded at the mammoth task of covering the diversity of Native North America, and I definitely feel that I have a better grasp of this subject than I did before picking up this book.
January 1, 2022
Almost more of a reference than narrative history (each chapter is divided up into much smaller segments of sub-topics), this is a deeply researched book that covers Native America so broadly its scope and treatment of the topic are awe-inspiring. Manages to treat Native Peoples as complex and still-very-much-around individuals/societies while also calling out white nonsense. Contains an extensive reference section and tons of amazing pictures depicting native people and artifacts from the present day and from prior centuries.
December 27, 2016
For a very long time Native America has been ‘hip’: surviving the predations of colonialism only to be once again over-run by cultural expropriation, stereotyping of the worst kind and written out of existence. Amid all of this, many of the most well-known accounts of Native America are tales of loss and destruction, of cultural extinguishment and expropriation and of what by any legal definition must be seen as genocide. In recent years, scholarship has begun to see a different, or more subtle, story – one of survival against the odds, of recovery and success despite colonisation. Alongside this there has been a resurgence of activism seen and understood beyond the usual activist circles, from Canada’s Idle No More, to the anti-mining activism in the South West invoked by the cover picture of this excellent book to, at the time of writing, the ongoing stand off as Standing Rock over threat to the Missouri River from an oil pipeline.
King’s idiosyncratic history of Native America is very much a ‘lumpers’’ history, one that draws together, integrates and synthesises pasts to present an inclusive and comprehensive account (as opposed to a ‘splitters’’ tale that disaggregates those pasts, drawing on localised distinctiveness): the dialogue between lumpers and splitters is one of the most productive in historical scholarship, where grand integrative narratives are tested and extended by localised and small scale analyses, and the localised pushed to allow generalisable conclusions. In taking his over 500 year sweep of colonial history, in drawing on archaeological evidence allowing many thousands of years to be traversed, in countering the genocidal characteristics of colonialism with the resistance and survival (‘survivance’) North America’s First Nations King provides us with an engrossing and engaging narrative recognises both, condemns and celebrates, highlights indigenous successes and autonomy and shows a subtle engagement with strategies that are grounded in indigenous ways and those where indigenous peoples play by the settlers’ rules.
King’s North America is, in keeping with the book, idiosyncratic – it excludes much of Spanish North America (that part that is now Mexico) but includes Danish North America (that is, Greenland). Although a ‘story’ of native North America, this is not a linear history. It is, rather, a thematically and geographically framed story. Thematically, King explores what he calls success (those who have ‘made it’) despite the destructiveness of colonialism and recovery from that same colonialism. This dialectic of destruction and survival, oppression and resistance is seen also in chapters on land, religion and belief, language and literature and art and material culture. These themes are laid out in a non-sequential form so the chapters flow along paths defined by the connections between ideas and concepts as a whole highlighting differences and similarities, ruptures and continuities across the area north of the Rio Grande. In this it is an ambitious book, and slightly ‘old fashioned’ in its willingness to deal with cultures, politics and history in such a broad manner while also delving into specifics in some cases – it is, after all, the work of a ‘lumper’. Crucially, this approach allows us to see links, flows and connections that might otherwise be hidden by the detail of micro studies.
In the final third of the book, King changes his organisational frame to shift away from these themes to a more geographical exposition with chapters on ‘the east,’ the west’, ‘the north’ and ‘the Pacific North West’. Although far from regionally comprehensive, this approach allows King to explore in more detail and with considerable nuance the differences and similarities of culture, history and politics, of US and Canadian, with a little Danish, political culture and structures, of indigenous dynamics that disrupt still residually popular notions of culture areas and note the enormous gaps in historical and archaeological knowledge. Throughout the book, he does so in a way that not only illustrates and informs understandings of the past, but also of the present. There were some moments of frustration here, in that it is in this part of the text that King discusses settlement patterns, but fails to mention the increasingly widespread indigenous notion that North America’s indigenous peoples are actually of the place and not migrants – this is a highly contested notion but more widely discussed than it was even five years ago. This points to a wider problem: King’s reliance on scholarly published material – despite his clear sympathy for and empathy with indigenous peoples, in many places he seems to find it hard to set aside the limiting provisions of the rules of scholarship to better hear First People’s voices. Even so, he hears, reports and engages with these voices in a much better and more engaged and respectful manner that many historians and social/political science scholars.
The book carries many of the markers of King’s life as curator at the British Museum: the engagement with material culture, the attentiveness to the archaeological record and the subtlety with which both are deployed. This curatorial style may also be seen in the non-linear structure of the book as well as its expansive (but not comprehensive – that would be asking too much) engagement with indigenous Americans. The errors (both of presentation and content) are minor and should easily be corrected by good scholarly practice (i.e., not relying on a single source) and the book well-presented overall (I would have liked to have seen some on the images in colour but understand that to have done so would likely have notably increased the price of an already expensive hardback).
This is a great place to start an exploration of indigenous North America, and although my professional life (and interests) means that I have a good working knowledge of many of the issues in North America’s first people I also got a lot from the book – both new information and new analytical frames. Don’t expect a richly theorised analysis, but expect a rich reading with subtle dialectics and a delightful sense of the dialogic to present an engaging, syncretic, nuanced view of native North America. All in all, it comes highly recommended, whether your motivation is to better understand the rising indigenous activism, to explore the processes and effects of the colonisation of North America, to make sense of the anthropological and historical context of indigenous art and material culture or any other reason, including nothing more than a desire to know.
King’s idiosyncratic history of Native America is very much a ‘lumpers’’ history, one that draws together, integrates and synthesises pasts to present an inclusive and comprehensive account (as opposed to a ‘splitters’’ tale that disaggregates those pasts, drawing on localised distinctiveness): the dialogue between lumpers and splitters is one of the most productive in historical scholarship, where grand integrative narratives are tested and extended by localised and small scale analyses, and the localised pushed to allow generalisable conclusions. In taking his over 500 year sweep of colonial history, in drawing on archaeological evidence allowing many thousands of years to be traversed, in countering the genocidal characteristics of colonialism with the resistance and survival (‘survivance’) North America’s First Nations King provides us with an engrossing and engaging narrative recognises both, condemns and celebrates, highlights indigenous successes and autonomy and shows a subtle engagement with strategies that are grounded in indigenous ways and those where indigenous peoples play by the settlers’ rules.
King’s North America is, in keeping with the book, idiosyncratic – it excludes much of Spanish North America (that part that is now Mexico) but includes Danish North America (that is, Greenland). Although a ‘story’ of native North America, this is not a linear history. It is, rather, a thematically and geographically framed story. Thematically, King explores what he calls success (those who have ‘made it’) despite the destructiveness of colonialism and recovery from that same colonialism. This dialectic of destruction and survival, oppression and resistance is seen also in chapters on land, religion and belief, language and literature and art and material culture. These themes are laid out in a non-sequential form so the chapters flow along paths defined by the connections between ideas and concepts as a whole highlighting differences and similarities, ruptures and continuities across the area north of the Rio Grande. In this it is an ambitious book, and slightly ‘old fashioned’ in its willingness to deal with cultures, politics and history in such a broad manner while also delving into specifics in some cases – it is, after all, the work of a ‘lumper’. Crucially, this approach allows us to see links, flows and connections that might otherwise be hidden by the detail of micro studies.
In the final third of the book, King changes his organisational frame to shift away from these themes to a more geographical exposition with chapters on ‘the east,’ the west’, ‘the north’ and ‘the Pacific North West’. Although far from regionally comprehensive, this approach allows King to explore in more detail and with considerable nuance the differences and similarities of culture, history and politics, of US and Canadian, with a little Danish, political culture and structures, of indigenous dynamics that disrupt still residually popular notions of culture areas and note the enormous gaps in historical and archaeological knowledge. Throughout the book, he does so in a way that not only illustrates and informs understandings of the past, but also of the present. There were some moments of frustration here, in that it is in this part of the text that King discusses settlement patterns, but fails to mention the increasingly widespread indigenous notion that North America’s indigenous peoples are actually of the place and not migrants – this is a highly contested notion but more widely discussed than it was even five years ago. This points to a wider problem: King’s reliance on scholarly published material – despite his clear sympathy for and empathy with indigenous peoples, in many places he seems to find it hard to set aside the limiting provisions of the rules of scholarship to better hear First People’s voices. Even so, he hears, reports and engages with these voices in a much better and more engaged and respectful manner that many historians and social/political science scholars.
The book carries many of the markers of King’s life as curator at the British Museum: the engagement with material culture, the attentiveness to the archaeological record and the subtlety with which both are deployed. This curatorial style may also be seen in the non-linear structure of the book as well as its expansive (but not comprehensive – that would be asking too much) engagement with indigenous Americans. The errors (both of presentation and content) are minor and should easily be corrected by good scholarly practice (i.e., not relying on a single source) and the book well-presented overall (I would have liked to have seen some on the images in colour but understand that to have done so would likely have notably increased the price of an already expensive hardback).
This is a great place to start an exploration of indigenous North America, and although my professional life (and interests) means that I have a good working knowledge of many of the issues in North America’s first people I also got a lot from the book – both new information and new analytical frames. Don’t expect a richly theorised analysis, but expect a rich reading with subtle dialectics and a delightful sense of the dialogic to present an engaging, syncretic, nuanced view of native North America. All in all, it comes highly recommended, whether your motivation is to better understand the rising indigenous activism, to explore the processes and effects of the colonisation of North America, to make sense of the anthropological and historical context of indigenous art and material culture or any other reason, including nothing more than a desire to know.
September 7, 2018
A most comprehensive coverage of the native North American peoples, their history, ethnicity, archaeology, anthropology, spiritual beliefs, cultural identities and languages along with the accounts of the upheavals as a result of the European influx.
A fascinating book filled with detailed research that covers the north east U.S. & Canada, Meso America, California, the Pacific Northwest, Arctic, Greenland, Florida and the Southeast, the Plains, Southwest and Great Basin areas.
'Blood and Land' is a vast work that I learned an awful lot from. I didn't know that the Seminole peoples owned the Hard Rock Cafe chain!
A fascinating book filled with detailed research that covers the north east U.S. & Canada, Meso America, California, the Pacific Northwest, Arctic, Greenland, Florida and the Southeast, the Plains, Southwest and Great Basin areas.
'Blood and Land' is a vast work that I learned an awful lot from. I didn't know that the Seminole peoples owned the Hard Rock Cafe chain!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews