Indigenous Visions of Rights and Sovereignty in the Age of Revolutions, 1760-1840

FAIN: FT-291546-23

Lori J. Daggar
Ursinus College (Collegeville, PA 19426-2509)

Research and writing leading to a book on Indigenous assertion of rights and sovereignty across North America and the Atlantic world, 1760-1840.

This project examines the ways in which Indigenous peoples and nations strove to define, project, and protect their independence, rights, and sovereignty—both political and cultural—during the Age of Revolutions in North America and the Atlantic World. The project is organized around a series of moments and exchanges—seemingly small encounters that, together, tell a larger story about Native peoples’ efforts to assert and maintain their power during the revolutionary era. Despite the violence and acceleration of U.S. settler colonialism that accompanied and followed the American Revolution, the project argues that many Native individuals understood this moment in history not as one of downfall or declension, but as one in which they could assert and define their own power.