Dr. Kathleen DuVal - Professor of History University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

Abstract: A millennium ago, across North America, there were centralized civilizations with powerful leaders and large cities that rivaled urban centers around the world. Then, following a period of instability, smaller Native nations emerged, moving away from urbanization. They built more sustainable economies and more egalitarian political structures. Europeans saw these Native nations as primitive, but in fact they were highly advanced consensus democracies that served their people better than the centralized civilizations had.

Bio: Kathleen DuVal is a history professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is a Guggenheim Fellow and the author of Native Nations: A Millennium in North America, which won the Cundill History Prize. Her other books include Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution, The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent, and the U.S. history textbook Give Me Liberty! She has published in the William and Mary Quarterly, the Journal of the Early Republic, The Atlantic, Time magazine, and the New York Times, and she is a regular book reviewer for the Wall Street Journal.