From Publishers Weekly
Reservations, long mired in poverty and oppression, have become rallying points for Native American society, according to this stirring history of the tribal sovereignty movement. Energized by the Civil Rights movement's gains and pressing their claims under long-dormant treaties, Indian tribes have taken control of reservation government from an autocratic Bureau of Indian Affairs, regained lost lands, asserted hunting and fishing rights, jump-started reservation economic development and revived Indian languages and culture. Wilkinson (American Indians, Time, and the Law
; etc.), formerly an attorney for the Native American Rights Fund and now a law professor at the University of Colorado, ranges widely over the sovereignty movement, emphasizing the court cases—like the Pacific Northwest salmon controversies and the wrangles over reservation gambling—that have expanded tribal rights. His sympathetic treatment extols the movement's success in redressing historic injustices, but sometimes skates too easily over difficulties in squaring ethnically based sovereignty with principles of democracy and equal citizenship. (He cites one reservation on which 50 Indians controlled a tribal government claiming jurisdiction over 3,000 non-Indian residents.) And he sometimes defends Native American prerogatives by invoking a cultural uniqueness—Indians' spiritual connection to the land, for example, may entitle them to "flexibility" in complying with environmental laws—that smacks of essentialism. But the story of the Native American renaissance is an inspiring one, and this book marks a deserving chapter. Photos. (Jan.)
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Wilkinson, a professor of law at the University of Colorado, presents a thorough and uniquely cohesive history of the modern tribal sovereignty movement, beginning with how the U.S. originally negotiated treaties with tribes, in part, to reduce Indian landholdings and limit their political power. In 1887 Congress passed the General Allotment Act, which allowed the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to transfer tribal lands to individual tribal members and open any land not allotted to non-Indians. By 1953 the government terminated all federal services and protections and urged tribes on reservations to relocate to urban centers. The children of the relocated became the Indian professional middle class and the wellspring for the sovereignty movement. Self-determination became government policy in the 1970s, bringing about reform even though the BIA stonewalled requests from tribes to operate their own programs. Activists persisted, pushing through federal legislation, buying back lost tribal land, and resolving fishing and hunting rights. There are still miles to go, but as Wilkinson shows, today's tribes are stronger than they've ever been. Rebecca MakselCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved