'Carrying the fire': UNC professor awarded $75,000 for Native American history book

Distinguished Professor Kathleen DuVal was recently announced as the 2024 winner of the Cundill History Prize for her novel “Native Nations: A Millennium in North America,” which spans over a thousand years of Native American history in North America. 

Awarded annually by McGill University, the Cundill History Prize offers a $75,000 award to a book that demonstrates “historical scholarship, originality, literary quality and broad appeal,” as stated on their website.

“[DuVal is] one of the foremost scholars of Native American history, and that's why I wanted to come here to UNC to study under somebody with that level of expertise,” Patricia Dawson, a former PhD student of DuVal, said. 

Dawson said she now uses “Native Nations” to teach her own students at Mount Holyoke College. Dawson, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, credits her great-great-great aunt Rachel Caroline Eaton — a historian believed to be the first Cherokee woman to earn a PhD — as well as DuVal, for inspiring her to become a professor.

DuVal said she has been teaching history courses for over 20 years, and credits her experiences in academia and her students' questions about Native American history as key inspirations for writing her book.

She also said she sought to raise awareness about the ongoing presence and resilience of Native peoples.

“I think that the way Native American history often gets taught is that Native Americans are sort of people of the past, that they were defeated early on by Europeans or European disease,” DuVal said. 

DuVal said she hopes her book helps readers bridge the gap between outdated historical narratives and the reality of Native Americans' active and continued presence today, after centuries of colonialism and an attempted genocide. 

Camilla Townsend, the 2020 Cundill Prize winner, also explored Indigenous history in her book, “Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs.” 

When writing her book, Townsend translated historical texts from Aztec communities and provided broader historical context to craft a detailed account of the civilization. She aimed to write in a language understandable for both direct descendants and non-Indigenous readers. 

“When I read those sources, I thought people would be happy to know what they said. The sources written in the 1500s by Indigenous peoples for their own children show incredible resilience, strength, pride and a desire never to be forgotten,” Townsend said.

Townsend said she donated a portion of her earnings to Ediciones Era, a Mexican press working to publish books by Indigenous authors. DuVal also wrote in an email to The Daily Tar Heel that she will donate a portion of her winnings to the UNC American Indian Center.

UNC is built upon native ground, and in the early 1800s, a significant portion of the University's wealth came from selling stolen Indigenous land.

Media Relations wrote to The DTH that UNC is dedicated to recognizing its historical connections to Indigenous peoples. They provided a quote from James Leloudis and Patricia Parker, co-chairs of the University Commission on History, Race, and a Way Forward.

“Conducting research on University lands and acknowledging its history and origins is a top priority for the History, Race, and a Way Forward Commission,” the chairs said in 2021. “We hope to engage in land acknowledgement with Native and Indigenous communities and seek partnerships in determining the best practices in acknowledging the University's past and educating our community.”

Dawson said that by viewing Indigenous peoples as figures of the past, society avoids confronting the ongoing benefits experienced from settler colonialism. While Dawson said she feels the erasure of her people’s continued existence try to make her invisible, she finds strength within her Cherokee community. 

“There's a concept in my community about carrying the fire. We carried the fire through the Trail of Tears, and we're still here, and we still have our fires, and we never, ever lost our sense of community or lost our nation,” Dawson said. 

DuVal said that while the treatment of Native Americans was undeniably a genocide, she believes that it is equally important to pair the term genocide with survival. 

“They came out the other side and are rebuilding today after centuries of violence against them and attempts to destroy them. They weren't destroyed,” she said. “They survived genocide.”

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