David J. Silverman writes and teaches about Native Americans and American colonialism. He is the author and editor of seven books on indigenous people and colonial American history. His work has made major contributions in shifting academic and understandings about Indigenous people's historical experiences with colonialism, Christianity, firearms, race, and national commemorations of the Thanksgiving holiday. His scholarship has received awards from the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the New York Association of History, and he has received major fellowships from the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies. He is active in bringing academic historians and members of under-served communities together in dialogue. He is currently writing a history of Native Americans and race making in the United States.