Preface to the First Edition

This book has been germinating in my heart and mind since the mid-1980s,

when I began my academic career as an instructor at Navajo Community College

(now Dine College), located within the Navajo Nation reservation. I

began my work there teaching a course in Navajo history, about which there

was plenty of material—not all of which was particularly good, though there

was enough available to craft a solid course.

I soon saw a need to teach courses on Navajo government and contemporary

Indian politics. I learned very quickly that, unlike with Navajo or Indian

history, there were no texts on Navajo government. With the college’s support,

I was able to write a short text titled Handbook of Navajo Government.

Material on Indian politics was, fortunately, somewhat less sparse, thanks in

large part to the work of Vine Deloria Jr. From his seminal polemic, Custer

Died for Your Sins, in 1969, Deloria has crafted a number of books, including

Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties (1974), American Indians, American Justice

(1983, with Clifford Lytle), The Nations Within: The Past and Future of

American Indian Sovereignty (1984, also with Clifford Lytle), and Documents

of American Indian Diplomacy: Treaties, Agreements, and Conventions,

1775–1979 (1999, with Raymond J. DeMallie). He has been a prolific

chronicler of Indian political issues and Indian social, religious, and legal

change, and a brilliant and sometimes caustic analyzer of the tribal-federal

relationship.

Deloria is trained in law and theology and is a political activist; his eclectic

works cut across disciplinary lines. But even with his works, I still saw a

need for texts on tribal governments (their forms, functions, and intergovernmental

relations), Indians who have three layers of citizenship (tribal, state,

and federal), and Indians’ distinctive relationship to the American political

system. I had considered writing such a textbook for use in my courses at

Navajo Community College but instead returned to graduate school in pursuit

of a Ph.D. in political science.

When I joined the faculty at the University of Arizona in the fall of 1990,

I was dismayed to learn that there was still very little published information

by political scientists (or other social scientists) about indigenous governments—

about either their internal dynamics or their relations with other

governments and organizations.

Sharon O’Brien, a non-Indian political scientist, had recently published a

book, American Indian Tribal Governments (1989), that is still the most

comprehensive and readable text on the structures and legal rights of modern

tribal governments and their evolving relationships with the federal and state

governments. The strength of the book is her case studies of five tribal

nations—the Seneca, the Muskogee Creek, the Cheyenne River Sioux, the

Isleta Pueblo, and the Yakima—that cover their history and contemporary

status. This volume is the outcome of a project sponsored by the National

Congress of American Indians (NCAI), the largest intertribal interest group in

the country. NCAI recognized the need for producing a basic text that emphasized

the relevance of tribal sovereignty and focused on tribal governments as

viable and contemporary political entities, and not as historical oddities that

went the way of the great buffalo herds. As valuable as O’Brien’s volume is for

its discussion of the history and structure of tribal governments, it is short on

analysis and interpretation and has little to say about Indian political participation

or the relationship of Indian peoples to the American political process.

Two other books devoted to tribal governments and politics have also

been published in recent years: Tribal Government Today: Politics on Montana

Indian Reservations (1990, revised in 1998), by James Lopach, Margery

Hunter Brown, and Richmond Clow, and Modern American Indian Tribal

Governments and Politics (1993), by Howard Meredith. The former study

provides an excellent account of how tribal governments currently function

in Montana, while the latter is a concise volume focused on the political

processes and governmental structures of tribal councils.

Also, the Yerington Paiute Tribe of Nevada, because of the paucity of published

material about indigenous governments, published a short but useful

manual, Introduction to Tribal Government, in 1985 that provides some

basic information about the distinctive status of tribes and their political

structure.

In addition, there have been, as McClain and Garcia noted, a number of

recent and not so recent Indian-related studies, a few by political scientists,

but most by lawyers, historians, and sociologists, that focus on “specific issue

areas.”1 This research has centered on natural resources and resource policy,

social and political movement activity, Indian legal rights, federal Indian policy,

Indian treaty and constitutional relations, political attitudes and voting

behavior of Indian people, tribal government reform, Indian gaming, economic

development, and rights of indigenous peoples at the international

level.

xvi PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

Despite the growing quantity and quality of the literature in the aforementioned

topical areas, there remains a severe dearth of information written

by political scientists for college-age students that examines the state of

political affairs in Indian country and between indigenous peoples and the

federal and state governments that is written from a perspective that recognizes

the sovereignty—the separate political status—of tribal nations.2

McCulloch believes this paucity of scholarship can be explained because the

very paradigms (i.e., pluralism, elitism, Marxism, and institutionalism) by

which most political scientists structure their analyses are unable to cope

with the distinctive status of tribal peoples and their governments.

Wilmer, Melody, and Murdock observed in a follow-up article in 1994 that

[I]n political science we have largely left the study of native peoples and their

political systems to sociologists and anthropologists and have, therefore, denied

the role that indigenous people have played in the development of the American

political system as well as the role they continue to play in the political and economic

processes of this country. This neglect has even led us to ignore the existence

of tribal governments as autonomous entities in intergovernmental relationships

within the American political system.3

Thus, I was elated when Paula McClain, Joe Stewart, and Jennifer Knerr

approached me in 1997 with the idea of writing a general text about indigenous

politics for the “Spectrum Politics” series that Paula and Joe were editing.

I believe the publication of such texts on tribal nations is crucial for alleviating

prevalent and often pernicious stereotypes about indigenous nations

who, despite their ongoing governmental status as separate nations, as

landowners, and as holders of important treaty rights, are often inaccurately

depicted as small and impoverished minority groups distinguishable from

other peoples of color solely by their cultural traits and tribal languages.

This book will, I hope, increase the knowledge of students and other

interested readers, increase civic discourse, provide evidence that might aid

in interracial and intergovernmental problem solving, and educate readers to

the fact that Indian nations—their lands, governments, and unique rights—

are not anachronistic just because of their longevity in the Americas, but are

the legitimate and ongoing expressions of the sovereign wills of distinctive

peoples who desire to be the determiners of their own fates, although tribal

fates are inexorably linked to those of their non-Indian neighbors.

The task before me is no easy one, considering, for instance, the sheer

number of indigenous communities populating the United States—562 at last

count—each with its own political, economic, social, and cultural systems

and differential relationships with the states and the federal government. But

my load has been lightened considerably by the support I have received from

a number of individuals and organizations.

First, I express my deep appreciation to Paula McClain and Joe Stewart for

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION xvii

bringing this book proposal to me. Their own individual and coauthored

scholarship on racial and ethnic minorities has been a great inspiration and

pool of knowledge to me and has played an important role in prying open

views in the discipline of political science about the status of minorities in

America.

Jennifer Knerr, acquisitions editor at Rowman & Littlefield, was the key

contact person from the very beginning. She had faith in Paula and Joe’s decision

to tap me to write this book, and she has been a steadfast supporter

throughout the lengthy process from proposal to completed manuscript. Jennifer,

Paula, and Joe also read the book in draft form and provided outstanding

advice on how to strengthen the manuscript. This is a much better book

because of their editorial skills and substantive knowledge about related

topics.

A number of colleagues, good friends all, read early drafts of my proposal

and gave outstanding comments and suggestions as I wrestled with how to

prepare a book outline that adequately covered within a limited space the politics

of so many indigenous groups and their political dance with one another,

the states, and the United States. Tsianina Lomawaima (Creek), professor of

American Indian studies at the University of Arizona; John Garcia and David

Gibbs, professors of political science at Arizona; Jim White, a professor of

political science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; and Franke

Wilmer, professor of political science at Montana State University all provided

keen insights and suggestions on what to add, what to cut, and what to

merge. Their combined comments helped me arrive at the general thematic

framework the book loosely follows.

I also appreciate the careful analysis and thoughtful suggestions provided

by all the reviewers of the book, including Jerry Stubben and Franke Wilmer,

and I give special thanks to my copy editor, Dave Compton, who helped put

the book in final form.

The first draft of the text was written while I was a fellow at the Udall

Center for Public Policy at the University of Arizona in the fall of 1998. I owe

a debt of gratitude to Stephen Cornell, the director; Bob Varady, the associate

director; the other fellows; and the excellent staff, many of whom are graduate

students, for providing an environment that enabled me to get the first

draft written. A special thanks to the spirit of Morris Udall, whose grace,

poise, and dedication to all Americans, but especially to the environment

(and her many species) and to Indian peoples during his long tenure in the

U.S. House of Representatives, watched over me as I worked on the manuscript.

I am especially grateful to Andrea Hall, Claudia Nelson, Stephanie

Joseph, Marcela Cabello, Melissa Boney, and Heidi Stark for their help in typing

and scanning a big chunk of the manuscript and in the preparation of

many of the tables and figures. They saved me valuable time as I struggled to

xviii PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

get the manuscript completed. Gwen Torges also provided me with some

good ideas on how better to introduce this complicated subject matter for a

lay audience.

A special thanks to Vine Deloria Jr., my dear friend and incomparable

patron, whose staunch advocacy of tribes as sovereigns—the Nations

within—has always served as an inspiration to me. Vine also read and provided

critical comments and suggestions on how to improve both the proposal

and the manuscript.

Thanks also to my mother, Thedis R. Wilkins, all my siblings and Lumbee

relatives, my Dine in-laws, and my close friends, George Whitewolf

(Monacan/Sioux), David P. Marshall (Cherokee/Creek), Rudy Coronado (Mexican

American/Lumbee), Danny Bell (Coharie), and June Lowery (Lumbee),

who have fought to remind their respective tribal governments and Indian

peoples that they are accountable to the people and to one another.

Last, thanks to my wife, Evelyn, and our three children, Sion, Niltooli,

and Nazhone, who ate many a meal without me as I focused on completing

this text. The trek continues.

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