Songs of Our Native Daughters addresses American historical issues that have influenced the identity of black women, including slavery, racism, and sexism.

[3] The idea for Our Native Daughters was conceived by Giddens whose previous album, Freedom Highway, dealt with slavery and the Civil Rights Era.

The first was a visit she made with her seven-year-old daughter to the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. During a private tour, Giddens encountered a quote from an 18th century poem that she felt needed to be in a song: I am shock'd at the purchase of slaves ...but I must be mum, for how could we do without sugar or rum?Her second experience was a screening of Nate Parker's controversial 2016 film Birth of a Nation.

[6] In the album's liner notes, Giddens writes that she was upset by the scene in the film where an enslaved woman is raped by the plantation owner's friend.

[2] The concept for the album began to change during the early recording sessions as Russell, Kiah and McCalla suggested a range of ideas for new songs centering on the legacies that helped shape the present day identity of black women.

As she points out in the liner notes, the instrument was first used exclusively by black musicians, but in the latter part of the 1800s, it became identified with white males who performed minstrel music in blackface, at the time a highly popular form of entertainment.

[15] Kiah is a graduate of East Tennessee State University, where she completed the Bluegrass, Old Time, and Country Music Studies program.

[17] After studying classical music briefly at New York University, she relocated to New Orleans, where she was recruited to join the Carolina Chocolate Drops while performing as a street musician.

Two years later, she joined with her now-husband JT Nero to form the group Birds of Chicago in the U.S., releasing four albums and an EP (as of 2018).