Wild Justice:: The People of Geronimo Vs. the Untited States

America's Indian Claims Commission was established by Congress in 1946 to hear historic tribal grievances with the federal government that grew out of the nation's expansion across Indian lands. By 1994, it had paid out $1.3 billion in settlements to Native American tribes, ""a pittance,"" stress the authors of this highly subjective history of the Commission. Lieder, a Washington lawyer, and Page, a freelance writer, focus on a dramatic case in which the Chiricahua Apaches (Geronimo's people) succeeded in 1979 in winning a $22-million settlement after nearly three decades of courtroom wrangling. In the course of detailing this one legal battle, however, the authors also review briefly the history of U.S.-Indian relations since the mid-19th century, the imprisonment of the Chiricahuas after the defeat of Geronimo in the 1880s, the Washington maneuvering that established the Commission and typical cases the Commission has heard over the years. The Commission, the authors suggest, was rigged against the Indians by the very fact that the legal system is constructed to deal with individual justice, not group justice. They also discuss what they call the ""real tragedy"" of what happened after the Indians were dispossessed of their traditional lands, the destruction of the tribal way of life as typified in the mismanagement of the reservations. If the book is partisan, it is also highly effective in making its arguments. (Aug.)