This Indian Country: American Indian Activists and the Place They Made

From the early 19th through the late 20th century, U.S. policy toward Native Americans unfolded in three stages: wars and often violent removal from the east to the west; concentration in reservations and the attempt to “civilize” “an inferior and dependent race”; and the granting of only limited tribal self-governance. University of Illinois historian Hoxie (Talking Back to Civilization) profiles eight Native American lawyers, lobbyists, writers, and politicians who “chose to oppose the oppressions of the United States with words and ideas rather than violence.” Mid-19th-century leader William Potter Ross, the son of a Scottish father and Cherokee mother, was a Princeton graduate who negotiated with the Union Pacific Railroad over its claims to tribal lands, and insisted on tribal legal autonomy. The writings of late-19th-century Paiute polemicist Sarah Winnemucca sharply challenged the paternalistic policies of “the Indian office and its ideology of progress.” Hoxie’s best chapter is on the Sioux lawyer and writer Vine Deloria Jr., who wrote that Native Americans should see themselves as “American Indians” not as assimilated “Indian Americans” and argued that U.S. policies should forward Indian self-governance. This is an important, well-written, and thoroughly documented work about Native American leaders, who, while lesser known, are no less important. (Oct.)