Blood Struggle: The Rise of Modern Indian Nations [Hardcover]

Charles Wilkinson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0393051498 | ISBN-13: 978-0393051490 | Publication Date: March 2005

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.

Editorial Reviews

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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From Booklist

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 Maksel
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (March 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393051498
• ISBN-13: 978-0393051490
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.5 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #865,398 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The struggle for Indian rights from an Indian point of view, November 21, 2006

By 

S. J. Snyder "De gustibus non disputandum" (Various, United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Blood Struggle: The Rise of Modern Indian Nations (Paperback)

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.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A History of Indian Self-Determination, May 18, 2005

By 

Robin Friedman (Washington, D.C. United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Blood Struggle: The Rise of Modern Indian Nations (Hardcover)

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.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A remarkable true story of can-do vindication, June 11, 2005

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Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blood Struggle: The Rise of Modern Indian Nations (Hardcover)

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.