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	Blood Struggle: The Rise of Modern Indian Nations Charles F. Wilkinson, 2005 - 541 pages average customer review:based on 5 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

For generations, Indian people suffered a grinding poverty and political and cultural suppression on the reservations. But tenacious and visionary tribal leaders refused to give in. They knew their rights and insisted that the treaties be honored. Against all odds, beginning shortly after World War II, they began to succeed. The modern tribal sovereignty movement deserves to be spoken of in the same breath as the civil rights, environmental, and women's movements.

Charles Wilkinson recounts in colorful terms tribal victories in major legal conflicts in contemporary America: the Indian land claims in Maine and other eastern states, the "salmon wars" of the Pacific Northwest, and the establishment of tribal casinos as a way of making inroads into poverty. Blood Struggle explores how Indian tribes took their hard-earned sovereignty?their right to self-determination?and put it to work for Indian peoples and the perpetuation of Indian culture.

Finally, this is the story of wrongs righted and noble ideals upheld. 20 illustrations, 16 maps.

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A remarkable true story of can-do vindication

Blood Struggle: The Rise Of Modern Indian Nations is the compelling true story of how Indian nations successfully asserted themselves and fought for their rights, including land ownership, salmon fishing, religion, gaming, and self-determination. After the end of World War II, when the American government coveted Indian land, a process called "termination" - a plan to sell off tribal land, disband tribes, and assimilate Native Americans - threatened to effectively native cultures. Yet beginning with a campaign in which Pueblo people persuaded Congress to return their sacred Blue Lake, one by one, Indian tribes started to speak up and call for their rights. These were battles that could be fought and won not by violence, but through politics, and the fruits of victory were reduced poverty, improved health, a lessening of the all-too-common adoption of Indian children out of Indian families, the creation of schools and colleges, the freedom to practice Native American religions and more. A remarkable true story of can-do vindication, and enthusiastically recommended for Native American modern history and reference shelves.

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Brilliant History

There have been a number of first person accounts of the struggles of the American Indian in the U.S. Among these are Russel Means' Where White Men Fear to Tread: The Autobiography of Russell Means, Dennis Banks' Ojibwa Warrior: Dennis Banks And The Rise Of The American Indian Movement. General histories have examined similar subjects such as In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, Incident at Oglala - The Leonard Peltier Story.

But this is the most thorough story of the movement of America's Indian nations towards self rule since 1960. The first portion of the book gives an introduction to American policy towards native tribes, from various treaties to the reservation system and in 1953, the policy of termination or ending government subsidies. The book is made up fo sketches of political battles in Washington and descriptions of the fate of the tribes and their leaders. A vast number of tribes are described and their vairous struggles. Maps are provided for mnay of the tribes.

As the author notes "the modern tribal sovereignty movement has had no single great inspiration leader...Indian country contains 500 seperate and independent peoples.(page 106)" An appendix gives a list of all these tribes.

Interesting chapters detail the Taos Pueblo and their victory in receiving lands. The story of the Alaskan attempt to free their lands led to an act in 1971 that returned 45 million acres to the people. Court cases are described such as Merion v. Jacarilla Apache that helped shape the question of sovereign rights among tribes.

The scale and breadth of this study is amazing, it examines topics such as the preservation of language and the intricate details of tribal government. An amazing work.

Seth J. Frantzman

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A History of Indian Self-Determination

The second half of the Twentieth Century was a period of great social upheaval in the United States. The changes wrought by the Civil Rights, women's, environmental, and anti-war movements are well-known. Perhaps less well-known, but of great importance, are the changes brought about by American Indian Tribes as they sought to organize their governments, implement and determine their treaty rights, and revitalize their traditional cultures. The story of tribal self-determination is told with eloquence and passion by Professor Charles Wilkinson in his recent book, "Blood Struggle: The Rise of Modern Indian Nations" (2005). Professor Wilkinson is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Colorado School of Law and the author of twelve books dealing with Indian affairs and with the American West. He is also a distinguished advocate and has worked as counsel to many Indian tribes on matters discussed in this book.

In his comprehensive and readable history, Professor Wilkinson places the self-determination movement against the backdrop of earlier Indian policy. He begins with the General Allotment Act of 1887 in which Congress provided for the division of Reservation lands to individual Indians with the goal of assimilating the Indians into the broader society and selling-off the tribal land base. He follows this with a discussion of Indian policy during the New Deal which partly reversed this trend but which lead to the policy of termination in the 1950s and early 1960s. The termination policy was also assimilationist in nature and had the goal of ending Federal supervision of and the special Federal relationship to Indian tribes. The tribes succeeded in reversing the termination policy when, in 1973, Congress passed a law restoring the Federal relationship to the Menominee Tribe of Wisconsin. Professor Wilkinson was instrumental in securing this legislation.

Professor Wilkinson offers an intellectual, legal, and cultural history of Indian self-determination. His book is full of stories and anecdotes of tribal people and their leaders: this multi-dimensional approach brings his study to life. I learned a great deal from his discussion of the work of three influential Indian writers: Charles Eastman, Black Hawk, (primarily in the famous book "Black Elk Speaks" by John Neihardt) and Darcy McNickle. Wilkinson's treatment of these writers provides a good understanding to the tribal movement and is frequently overlooked in other treatments of this subject.

Professor Wilkinson offers well-paced accounts of the Indian attempted takeovers at Alcatraz and of portions of the BIA buildings in Washington, D.C. in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The book discusses, with the perspective of the insider, the salmon fishing litigation in the Northwest in which tribes secured a recognition of their treaty rights (the "Boldt" decision), the story of Indian land claims in the Northeast, tribal efforts to restore land unjustly taken from them and much else. He discusses the shifting fortunes of Indian litigants in recent years before the Supreme Court of the United States. The book also covers tribal business endeavors in such areas as forest management, resorts, oil and gas pipelines, and most recently and controversially, casino gambling.

Professor Wilkinson writes with a mastery of his subject and a deep commitment to the rightness of Indian causes. This is the source of great strength and eloquence in the book but also the source of some questions. At times, Professor Wilkinson doesn't let the reader see that there are (at least) two sides to every question. Too often, objections to the tribal position in various matters are swept aside or belittled. Tribal positions on various separate issues are indiscriminately lumped together with little effort to distinguish what is valuable with what is questionable. In his effort to set forth what he deems to be the values of Indian culture ( a slow-pace of life, living close to the land, a spiritual tie to land and community, environmentalism) Professor Wilkinson perhaps simplifies and romanticizes many individual cultures which differ widely from each other. Conversely, he oversimplifies and is overly critical of life in the broader United States which Professor Wilkinson finds conformist, materialistic, and destructive, and intolerant of differences. There is too much easy caricature here on both sides and, I think, too great a stress on the values of ethnicity and nationalism. The interplay and relationship between a traditional and a common culture is an important question faced by every group in the United States and deserves closer thought than it receives in this study.

Professor Wilkinson's study teaches a great deal about the development of Indian tribes and institutions in our recent history. The book held my interest and deeply moved me. It will encourage the reader to think about a part of our Nation's history and its present that is too often ignored.

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The struggle for Indian rights from an Indian point of view

Wilkinson writes a very good overview of the Indian rights movement in the U.S., and how the various tribes, though still lagging overall American standards in many ways, have made economic gains and, above all, self-determination gains, in the last 50 years.

It is true that Wilkinson does overlook the degree of non-Indian hostility to such things as enforcement of off-reservation hunting and fishing rights. He also, to counter the angle of this (and not being an environmenetalist), does not look at how the enforcement of these rights has been used as a scapegoat by Anglos for overhunting, overfishing, and overextraction of other resources such as timber in other Anglo-Indian conflicts.

Another slim area of coverage is the American Indian Movement. Just what was the tension between the more urban, but not anywhere near "urbanized," AIM and reservation tribes? What's Wilkinson's final assessment of how much good, or harm, it did?

Finally, Wilkinson does dive into intra-tribal conflict as much as he could. With the Hopi, for example, he briefly mentions tension between a Washington-driven Hopi constitution and tribal council, on the one hand, and the traditional council of elders, on the other, but never brings to life the depth of this tension, and even conflict, over an issue like Black Mesa.

In other words, this book could well have stood another 50-70 pages and not have been overwritten.

But, enjoy it for what it is.

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Good, legal-oriented review of Indians' assertions of sovereignty

This book tells the story of the resurgent American Indian tribes. It differs from some other accounts in several ways. First, it takes a historical approach going back about 60 years - - some books go further back while others pick up the story in the 1960s and 1970s. Second, it emphasizes the reservations and not the urban Indians who tended to dominate the American Indian Movement (AIM). Third, Wilkinson takes a fairly legalistic approach; he's a white lawyer who has worked extensively on behalf of tribes on various issues.

Fourth, and most important, Wilkinson is pretty uncritical of the tribes' decisions. I can understand this stance - - after all, outsiders shouldn't be telling sovereign tribes what to do. Moreover, as their sometime lawyer, Wilkinson should be taking his clients' perspective. Still, this limits the book's discussion considerably, especially in contrast to Bordewich's _Killing the White Man's Indian_ (also written by a sympathetic white man).

Wilkinson tells many of the stories that you'd want him to tell - - gaining control over one's own lands, natural resources, and sacred sites; a flourishing of culture, language, and education; economic development; and the like. He displays admirable breadth, from California to Maine, Washington to Florida. Alaska and Hawai'i get less attention than they might in different hands, but in fairness to Wilkinson, they face a somewhat distinct set of issues.

I read this at the same time I read Bordewich, and I think Bordewich has the better book. This one is significantly longer, allowing greater depth and breadth, and it differs from others (including Bordewich) in some ways I've described above. I'd read Bordewich first, but this is a good choice to read second.

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