This history is about why no understanding of the wider world is possible without comprehending the original inhabitants of the U.S. and Canada: Native Americans, First Nations and Arctic peoples. Highly personal book and based on years of first-hand research, this book introduces a deeply complex story, of myriad identities and determined ethnicities—from the desert Southwest to the high Arctic, from first contact between Europeans and Native Americans to the challenges of Native leadership today. King confronts the reader with the paradoxes, diversity and successes of Native North Americans. Their astonishing ingenuity and supple intelligence enabled, after centuries of suffering violence and dispossession, a striking level of recovery and optimism in the 21st century. Beautifully illustrated and filled with arresting stories, looks well beyond the "feathers-and-failure" narratives beloved by historians to show us Native North America as it was and is.