Ned Blackhawk, an American historian who is a member of the Te-Moak tribe and the Western Shoshone nation, teaches at Yale University. In recognition of his first significant work, Violence Over the Land: Indians and Empire in the Early American West (2006), he was awarded the Robert M. Utley Prize in 2007 as well as the Frederick Jackson Turner Award in the same year.
Blackhawk spent his childhood in Detroit, Michigan, where he was raised as a “urban Indian.” He is a member of the Te-Moak Tribe, which is part of the Western Shoshone nation and is located in Nevada. In 1992, he received his diploma from McGill University. In 1999, he attended the University of Washington in order to complete his doctoral studies in history. In the beginning, he was a member of the faculty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he taught American Indian Studies from the years 1999 to 2009.
Blackhawk subsequently became a member of the teaching staff at Yale University and he is associated with the History and American Studies departments there. He is one of the two American Indian teachers at the institution. Philip J. Deloria is the name of the other professor at Yale. The Yale Group for the Study of Native America is another organisation that Blackhawk is associated with. The American Quarterly is the journal of the American Studies Association, and Blackhawk served on the Managing Board until 2011. He was invited to become a member of the Advisory Board of the International Museum of Family History in 2012.