American author Kathleen DuVal’s Native Nations: A Millennium in North America is the winner of the 2024 Cundill History Prize.
Administered by McGill University, the prize annually awards $75,000 US ($104,276 Cdn) to a book that demonstrates historical scholarship, literary excellence and broad appeal. It is open to books from anywhere in the world, as long as they are available in English.
Native Nations examines how Indigenous peoples within North America built and maintained urban centres and diverse civilizations throughout history. It uses research and documentation to look at issues of power and fights for sovereignty and self-determination in the face of colonialism.
The 2024 jurors awarded DuVal, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for her “sweeping” 1,000-year history of North America from the rise of ancient cities to the present day, which entirely reframes our understanding of the period with Indigenous power and sovereignty at its centre.
DuVal is an author and a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she teaches early American and American Indian history.
“One of the most wonderful things about Native Nations by Katheleen DuVal is that it brings unexpected and, to many readers, unknown aspects of that story, to prominence,” said jury chair Rana Mitter in a press statement.
“She does this by bringing in historians and analysts of the Indigenous American experience from within their own scholarship, bringing the story to the forefront of our wider understanding in this huge sweeping history that starts more than 1,000 years ago and brings us up to the present day.”
The 2024 jury is rounded out by historian American Nicole Eustace, Canadian journalist and writer Stephanie Nolen, Nigerian historian Moses Ochonu and American historian Rebecca L. Spang.
The two runner-ups are Judgement at Tokyo by Gary J. Bass and Before the Movement by Dylan C. Penningroth. Each finalist will receive $10,000 US ($13,747 Cdn).
Last year’s winner was Tania Branigan for her book Red Memory.
Other previous winners also include Tiya Miles, Marjoleine Kars, Camilla Townsend and Julia Lovell.
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