"Indigenous Nations and Modern States provides a refreshing, insightful – and needed – reframing of the international system, contemporary ethnic conflict, and the politics of indigenous peoples. The text brings to the analytical forefront the underlying tensions between surviving nations and national identities and the states that were constructed on top of them. As Ryser clearly elucidates, contemporary nation-states have not assimilated or vanquished the continuing attachment to non-state national identities, and this analysis facilitates a needed "un-thinking" of the inevitability, stability, and predominance of the unitary nation-state." —Erich Steinman, Pitzer College"In Indigenous Nations and Modern States, Ryser brilliantly describes how states have appeared and disappeared during the history of mankind. As states come and go, the Nations and Peoples persist over time, and the book gives a detailed description of the situation for the world’s many Nations and Peoples. In particular, the insight provided by Ryser into the relations between the American Indian nations and the early European settlers is eye-opening and differs greatly from the common 20th century version of those events. The book is an important contribution to both the survival of the Nations and Peoples of the Fourth World and to making the world a better place."—Göran Hansson, Former Chairman of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization