Black Hills/White Justice: The Sioux Nation versus the United States, 1775 to the Present (Paperback)

by Edward Lazarus (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Lazarus is a compelling writer. . . . [He] learned the story of the Black Hills at the family dinner table, straight from the mouth of the Sioux Nation counsel."—Great Plains Quarterly

(Great Plains Quarterly )

"[Lazarus’s] judgment is sound; his prose fluent; and his research exhaustive."—Wilcomb E. Washburn, late director, American Studies Program, Smithsonian Institution. "Black Hills/White Justice is both explicitly and implicitly appalling, a vivid portrait of our myopic, arrogant, militaristic government—unchanged since the nineteenth century. I hope it finds many readers."—Evan S. Connell, author of Son of the Morning Star

(Evan S. Connell )

Product Description

Black Hills/White Justice tells of the longest active legal battle in United States history: the century-long effort by the Sioux nations to receive compensation for the seizure of the Black Hills. Edward Lazarus, son of one of the lawyers involved in the case, traces the tangled web of laws, wars, and treaties that led to the wresting of the Black Hills from the Sioux and their subsequent efforts to receive compensation for the loss. His account covers the Sioux nations’ success in winning the largest financial award ever offered to an Indian tribe and their decision to turn it down and demand nothing less than the return of the land.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 500 pages
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press (March 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803279876
• ISBN-13: 978-0803279872
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #664,130 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars good overview with a tilt, July 18, 2000

By	James Stripes (Deer Park, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This book offers good historical narrative, but also justifies the actions of the author's father. It lacks balance in its perspectives.

The author's father, Arthur Lazarus, was one of the principle attorney's who won the largest, longest running Indian land claims case in US history. In 1980 the US Supreme Court upheld a judgement in favor of the Sioux of $17.1 million plus interest for loss of the Black Hills. However, the check has never been cashed; rather, the judgement money continues to draw interest. The Sioux now reject their legal victory that awarded them "just compensation" for loss of sacred lands, arguing that only restoration of these lands to the Sioux will end the conflict.

In _Black Hills / White Justice_, Edward Lazarus describes the legal efforts of Oglala attorney Mario Gonzalez (one of the leaders in the land restoration movement) as a Lakota Don Quixote who lacks a sense of reality. This bias affects much of the story that Lazarus tells in this history.

Never the less, there is no other book that offers a comprehensive overview of the history of US-Sioux relations through more than two centuries. The book is well researched and well written. It is a good primer.

The story in this book begins as the Sioux begin their rise to dominance on the northern Plains as they acquire horses and guns. The focus then shifts to the interactions of the Sioux with non-Indians from early traders and explorers to government officials, soldiers, settlers, and finally, bureaucrats and lawyers. In the focus on this relationship, the book offers little insight into the internal dynamics of Sioux culture, but it says more about the legal relationships between tribes and the federal government than many other books.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Seconding James Stripes's review, March 9, 2001

By	chris rushlau (Portland Maine USA) - See all my reviews

I'd also add a consideration of author Lazarus's viewpoint, which Stripes rightly says is distorted by Lazarus's attempt to vindicate his father's role as an attorney for the Lakota tribes. I am a third year law student who sees himself as a Peace Corps Volunteer sent from the "real world" to the world of law. Legal education is worse than most in its warping effect on students' judgment. I am also reading Lazarus's "Closed Chambers", about the Supreme Court for whose Justice Blackmun Lazarus served as a post-graduate "clerk" in 1988-9. This latter book was written recently and is generally well-balanced and hopeful. By contrast, the Black Hills book was written while and soon after Lazarus completed his education, and shows signs of the preternatural or premature jadedness that not only infects law schools but seems to be part of the curriculum. I'll let Lazarus speak for himself (from page 230-1, as far as I've gotten in the book): "Tough and technically precise, the motion to vacate reflected an unmistakable contrast between the tribe's old and new counsel. Gone was Case's [the "bungler"] essentially romantic view of the legal process and his sentimental confidence that the government's overriding sense of fairness would lead it to a just settlement with the Sioux. Instead, Sonosky, Schifter, and Lazarus brought to the Sioux claims a hard-nosed view of the law and a degree of skepticism about the federal government. To them, the law was a two-edged sword to be wielded boldly and carefully in the service of clients. The legal system was a battlefield where the better cause did not always prevail. And the federal government was sometimes an ally, sometimes an adversary, but rarely the impartial purveyor of justice. The lawyers differed in their attitude towards their clients as well. To Case--the frontiersman's son inspired by the melting pot image of America--the Sioux were warriors to the last man who, nonetheless, wanted to assume their rightful place as members of an integrated national family. Sonosky, Schifter, and Lazarus, by contrast, heirs to a Jewish sensitivity about issues of ethnicity and discrimination, believed deeply in the New Deal's promise of cultural pluralism and Indian self-rule. They thought Indian law generally, and the claims process specifically, should be directed not towards ultimate assimilation but towards obtaining for Indians every penny to which they were entitled under law and guaranteeing to them a degree of independence in the direction of their own destinies." I think the heirs of the European usurpers should give the heirs of the original inhabitants of the continent a tenth of the current land/wealth. If the latter heirs want to buy a chunk of California and set up a gated community or a new state, feel free. The trend in Indian law seems to be the steady encroachment on Indian "independence". The father Lazarus's representation of the Black Hills claim netted 17 million dollars, what, five hundred dollars per survivor. No wonder the tribes voted to reject the award or settlement. Old Case's wheedling of the various courts, which younger Lazarus depicts as deaf to any call for justice anyway, at least had the merit of believing that Right means something in this country. If you don't believe that your opposite number cares about justice, what is your basis for persuasion? Public humiliation? Dazzling ambiguities to batter her or him into silence? Veiled threats (that you couldn't carry through on anyway)? These seem like the public's view of "lawyer's tricks". I say all this with younger Lazarus's later "Closed Chambers" in mind. Despite a couple of rough edges in its early pages, it is a passionate and philosophical study (so far, as of page 260) of a nation struggling to govern itself under law. There are no particular bad guys, no Case fall-guys for Lazarus's righteous indignation to exhaust itself upon. The later book is more of a Shakespearean tragedy, with the worst characters having redeeming (or redeemable) qualities. In a phrase, Lazarus has lost, by the time of this later book's writing, the "scorched earth" mentality that carried him into his earlier work. I suspect he got that mentality, largely, in law school. I think, as elder bungler Case might have said sheepishly,that that's a damn' shame and not necessary. If law is indeed a conversation, you can't have a conversation with someone if you are constantly calling him or her, in your mind or under your breath, a damn' fool. Speaking of Jewishness, I believe the Old Testament, one of the Wisdom Books, says somewhere that the person who calls someone else a fool (a rakah?) will not be forgiven. That's not an epiphany--it's the experience of neighbors who distrust anyone who badmouths an absent neighbor: what will this guy say about you when your back is turned? If you're not a good citizen, you're not going to be a good lawyer.