Walter R. Echo-Hawk's In the Courts of the Conqueror: The 10 Worst Indian Law Cases Ever Decided (Fulcrum Publishing, 2010) is an exceptional book, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Indian law, or social justice and human rights issues in general.
There are a number of good resources out there that succinctly provide the basics of Indian law, most notably American Indian Law in a Nutshell by William C. Canby, Jr., which is now in its 5th Edition.
But Echo-Hawk does much more than just lay out the basics: for each of the 10 cases he presents, he provides a historical and cultural context, as well as a systematic (and at times brutally frank) analysis of where the court in question went wrong, and possible reasons why. He does not shy away from the racism, ignorance, and hypocrisy that underlie the decisions he analyzes - to the contrary, he holds these shameful elements up to the light of day, with the hope they will no longer be rationalized or denied. From the early U.S. Supreme Court cases that justified the outright theft of Indian land, to more recent cases allowing, essentially, the theft of Indian children and the destruction of Indian holy places, Echo-Hawk calls into question the premises upon which the errant decisions are based and illustrates the flaws in reasoning that buttress the decisions. He shows how time and time again, the U.S. Supreme Court--an institution that ostensibly prides itself upon being "above" politics--in fact caved in to the political pressures surrounding each decision, be those pressures "the conquest and colonization of the continent during the era of Manifest Destiny" that led to the reprehensible removal of many eastern tribal nations, or the "patently racist notions of white supremacy" that led the Court, in Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, to fabricate, from whole cloth, the plenary-power doctrine.
Echo-Hawk also discusses how each case continues to resonate among the native people affected by it. In so doing, he brings a sense of urgency and modernity to even the oldest cases presented. For example, he discusses the lingering impact of the seminal U.S. Supreme Court case of Johnson v. M'Intosh, which "paved the way" for the destruction of the indigenous land base, the reclamation of which has become a top priority for many tribal nations today. He examines as well the unsettling legacy, and painful impact even at present, of war crimes committed by agents of the U.S. government at places like Sand Creek and Fort Robinson, crimes that have never been acknowledged, explained, or apologized for, by that government.
In the last section of the book, Echo-Hawk presents a plan for reforming what he calls "the dark side" of federal Indian law. He laments the disturbing trend, begun by the Rehnquist Court and apparently continued unabated by the Roberts Court, of ruling against native interests, despite any "discernible doctrinal footing" in the law for so ruling. He makes a cogent and compelling argument for the adoption by the United States of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and puts forward eight additional steps toward reform. These steps, if implemented, would lead to much-needed legal, political, and social improvements to native cultures and communities. The emphasis on healing and moving forward is an important component of Echo-Hawk's fine book, and all the more reason why anyone, native or non-native, who is interested in Indian law, native cultures, and human rights in general should read this book.
![American Culture [under construction]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61f%2B7EkDHmL._AA60_.jpg)
