Ken Burns’s new documentary series includes history often left out of textbooks: the economic and diplomatic roles sovereign Indigenous nations had in the American Revolution.

, airing this week on PBS, highlights the Haudenosaunee Confederacy in Episode 1 as Benjamin Franklin's inspiration for union among 13 British colonies in North America, 20 years before the revolution.

“They wouldn't do it. They didn't want to give up any autonomy, and so they lost the lesson of the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Tuscarora, Oneida and Mohawk people who had figured this out centuries ago,” Ken Burns told CBC Indigenous.

The 12-hour series depicting the bloody clash for Indigenous land involving more than two dozen nations, European as well as Native American, was almost a decade in the making. Indi

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