By Eric Johnson

CHAPEL HILL (May 16, 2025) – When the historian Kathleen Duval first started teaching at UNC Chapel Hill back in 2003, she wanted her undergraduates to examine some of the common tropes they might hold about Native Americans. 

“I walked into the classroom expecting students to have these images of Indians riding horses and wearing headdresses,” Duval recalled. “So I asked, ‘What’s your stereotype of Native Americans?’ And a student raised his hand and said, ‘They ride motorcycles and wear leather jackets!’ And I thought, ‘I have got a lot to learn about North Carolina Native Americans.’”

The student who offered the motorcycles-and-leather image of Native life was from the Lumbee Tribe, one of the many Native students and scholars Duval has met during her long career at UNC. That’s the glorious thing about a public university like Carolina — it puts world-class scholars in conversation with students from all walks of life, and with colleagues and communities across the state. It makes for a style of scholarship richer and more interesting because it’s deeply connected to the world beyond campus.

Last week, Duval was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her magnificent book Native Nations, a 700-page chronicle of Indigenous history in North America that includes plenty about the Lumbee Tribe, about the mythology of the Lost Colony, about the Cherokee Nation and efforts by modern Native communities to tell their own histories. The book’s sweep is enormous, covering a millennium of Indigenous history across North America, but also grounded in conversations and friendships Duval cultivated at Carolina.

When she wants to make a point about the geography of Roanoke Island, she recounts a boat trip with friends across Albemarle Sound. When she writes about the Lumbee historical drama Strike the Wind!, she recounts a visit to Pembroke to see the play performed under the stars. In discussing the preservation of the Cherokee language, she recounts Cherokee Coffee Hour sessions hosted by a UNC linguist.

“Being here, I’ve been taught so much about Native history, but especially the Native present, and that continuing theme of Native persistence,” she said. “That’s something that’s really been driven home at UNC. Every day I’m teaching at Carolina, I learn something and I have fun.”

The fundamental argument in Native Nations is that our common understanding of Indigenous societies in North America is incomplete at best. Duval emphasizes that Native civilizations were vast and complex, with urban centers that rivaled cities in every other part of the world during, and that Native societies survived for centuries after contact with Europeans — and still survive in many different forms today. 

Her work combines written archives with archeology and oral history to recreate the daily lives and geopolitics of Indigenous Americans, rolled into compelling stories that any decent reader can follow. Duval has also contributed to Give Me Liberty!, one of the most commonly used textbooks in high school history classrooms nationwide.

“I think that the work we do at a place like UNC should be a real value to the wider public,” she said. “So many Americans are eager for more and better information about American history. If we just sit on campus and only talk to ourselves, we’re depriving the public of the latest research and understanding.”

I love that North Carolina remains a place where a student from Robeson County can learn — and teach! — alongside a Pulitzer-winning historian. A place where the star professors still care about writing for the general public. A place where there’s still time and space for a brilliant scholar to think, listen, write, and give us a heightened sense of our own history. 

“People ask big questions when big things are happening, and that’s the great thing about history,” Duval told me. “Whatever we’re facing today, there’s always so much we can learn from the way others have thought and lived.”

Eric Johnson lives in Chapel Hill and works for the UNC System.