Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power

Lakota America presents a comprehensive history of the Lakota Indians and their long-term role in shaping North American power. The book centers iconic Lakota leaders and argues that the Lakota functioned as an enduring Indigenous regime that commanded human fates from the early 1500s into the early 2000s. Hämäläinen traces how Lakota people reinvented themselves in distinct phases, first as river people who dominated the Missouri Valley and later as horse people who ruled on the high plains during what the book frames as America’s first major westward expansion.