POWER OF THE PEOPLES

ekka Hämäläinen, Rhodes Professor of American History at Oxford, has made a career of challenging a prevailing myth of Native American history— namely, that indigenous peoples were merely passive victims of European colonization. On the contrary, in his 2008 book, , he asserted that the Comanches, who dominated the southern Plains from roughly 1750 to 1875, ruled what amounted to an empire in its own right, one that pursued trade, territorial expansion, and resource extraction, among other hallmarks of imperialism. (2019), made similar observations about the Sioux. Although challenged by some scholars, Hämäläinen’s work has informed our understanding of Native North America.