- Details
- By Levi Rickert
Opinion. Ken Burns, the award-winning filmmaker whose work has defined how Americans understand the Civil War, baseball, jazz, and the Vietnam War, is back this week on PBS with a new six-part documentary, The American Revolution.
Ten years in the making, The American Revolution finally incorporates the Indigenous side of a story that has been taught through a narrow lens for two and a half centuries. To ensure accuracy, Burns’ team reached out to the Cherokee Film Office, a division of the Cherokee Nation, for guidance. The office provided consultation as well as photo and film assets to help deepen the narrative.
Last Thursday, I spoke with Burns for a Native Bidaské episode about his effort to tell a more complete story. He told me the version of the American Revolution most Americans know is sanitized and superficial. Too often, he said, the story is reduced to “great men in Philadelphia thinking great thoughts.”
Burns described the Revolutionary War not just as a war for independence, but as a civil war and a global contest for the prize of North America.
Indigenous peoples had been living on this land for thousands of years before the Revolution.
“The central story is the taking of Native American land,” Burns said. “We talk about how the Iroquois Confederacy inspired Benjamin Franklin to think maybe the 13 colonies could unite. They did — 20 years later.”
Most American students are not taught this historical fact.
For generations, the story of the American Revolution has been told as though it unfolded on an empty continent. Textbooks, documentaries, and popular histories have centered the Founding Fathers — their debates, their battles, their lofty ideals — while ignoring the Indigenous nations whose homelands became the battlegrounds for a new republic. Native peoples were never bystanders to the Revolutionary era; they were central to it.
That is why Burns’ decision to include Native stories into The American Revolution is not only welcome — it is long overdue.
Burns is one of the most influential storytellers of American history. His films shape how millions of viewers understand the past. When Native people are left out, the public learns a version of history in which we do not exist — or worse, in which we appear only as obstacles to American progress. When he chooses to include Native voices and perspectives, he opens the door to a fuller, more honest national narrative.
In The American Revolution, Burns does exactly that.
For the first time in his body of work, Burns elevates Native history in a Revolutionary-era story that has too often erased us. He acknowledges that tribal nations maintained sophisticated diplomatic relationships, made strategic decisions about alliance or neutrality, and fought not for abstract ideals, but for the survival of their homelands and communities. He recognizes that the Revolution unleashed devastating consequences for Indigenous nations — consequences continue today.
This matters because the myths of the Revolution still shape federal Indian policy and public attitudes. When the country imagines its founding solely as a story of liberty for 13 colonies, it becomes easier to ignore how quickly the new republic turned westward and targeted Native lands for expansion. The dispossession that followed was not an accident. It was foundational to the American project.
By including Native perspectives, Burns forces viewers to grapple with an uncomfortable truth: The birth of the United States and the dismantling of Indigenous sovereignty happened simultaneously.
This is not solely a story of tragedy. It is also a story of endurance.
Burns’ decision to consult Native scholars and engage Native filmmakers — including Cherokee Film’s Jen Loren — ensures the documentary does not portray Indigenous peoples as vanished or defeated. Instead, our ancestors’ choices, sacrifices and struggles are shown as part of a continuous story — one that extends into today’s fight for sovereignty, cultural revitalization and historical accuracy.
Native people have always known that you cannot tell the story of the American Revolution without us. Now, millions of viewers will finally hear that truth as well.
Ken Burns’ The American Revolution does not correct every omission or heal every wound left by centuries of misrepresentation. But it is a meaningful moment — a public acknowledgment that Native history is American history.
For Native viewers, it offers long-overdue visibility. For non-Native viewers, it brings clarity. For all of us, it brings the nation a little closer to understanding the full story of how this country came to be.
As we continue pushing for accurate, respectful representation in classrooms, on screens, and in public memory, Burns’ willingness to expand the narrative serves as a reminder: America’s story is incomplete without Native nations. It always has been.
When I spoke with Burns earlier this week for our streaming show, Native Bidaske. I asked him about current attempts by the Trump administration to sanitize history, an issue that has long affected Native people and their communities. Burns had an interesting perspective.
“Everybody likes a good story, and nobody likes a simplified story,” he said. “Only autocrats like that. And it won't last long. It can't last long because stories get out.”
Thayék gde nwéndëmen - We are all related.
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