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First book-length overview of the Federal Acknowledgment Process enacted in 1978, the legal mechanism whereby native groups achieve official "recognition" of tribal status.
Who counts as an American Indian? Which groups qualify as Indian tribes? These questions have become increasingly complex in the past several decades, and federal legislation and the rise of tribal-owned casinos have raised the stakes in the ongoing debate. In this revealing study, historian Mark Edwin Miller describes how and why dozens of previously unrecognized tribal groups in the southeastern states have sought, and sometimes won, recognition, often to the dismay of the Five Tribes—the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles. Miller explains how politics, economics, and such slippery issues as tribal and racial identity drive the conflicts between federally recognized tribal entities like the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, and other groups such as the Southeastern Cherokee Confederacy that also seek sovereignty. Battles over which groups can claim authentic Indian identity are fought both within the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Federal Acknowledgment Process and in Atlanta, Montgomery, and other capitals where legislators grant state recognition to Indian-identifying enclaves without consulting federally recognized tribes with similar names. Miller’s analysis recognizes the arguments on all sides—both the scholars and activists who see tribal affiliation as an individual choice, and the tribal governments that view unrecognized tribes as fraudulent. Groups such as the Lumbees, the Lower Muscogee Creeks, and the Mowa Choctaws, inspired by the civil rights movement and the War on Poverty, have evolved in surprising ways, as have traditional tribal governments. Describing the significance of casino gambling, the leader of one unrecognized group said, “It’s no longer a matter of red; it’s a matter of green.” Either a positive or a negative development, depending on who is telling the story, the casinos’ economic impact has clouded what were previously issues purely of law, ethics, and justice. Drawing on both documents and personal interviews, Miller unravels the tangled politics of Indian identity and sovereignty. His lively, clearly argued book will be vital reading for tribal leaders, policy makers, and scholars.
Compares the experiences of three central Louisiana Indian tribes with federal tribal recognition policy to illuminate the complex relationship between recognition policy and American Indian racial and tribal identities.
A small group of Indians known as the Honey Lake Maidus are very much alive today in the valley of the Susan River of northeast California. As a tribe, however, they do not exist. This is because they have not been acknowledged, a process by which the federal government officially recognizes Indian tribes. By contrast, other California Indian tribes have won federal recognition and come to represent a driving force behind most Indian legislation, including laws to regulate Indian casinos. Their political power and economic prosperity, however, has incurred resentment. Caught in this web of contending political forces are hundreds of small Indian groups, peoples like the Honey Lake Maidus who, because they lack federal recognition, cannot protect their cultures and secure their futures. They are also unable to undertake economic endeavors that would provide care for their children and elders. In Quest for Tribal Acknowledgment, Sara-Larus Tolley, an anthropologist who has worked for the Honey Lake Maidus for several years, recounts the group’s efforts to obtain recognition. In 1999, the tribe gained funding to work full-time on its petition, which it submitted to the government in 2001. While the Honey Lake Maidus wait for their application to gain “active” status, they continually update and refine its contents. And like hundreds of other unrecognized Indian groups seeking acknowledgment, they hope for the future.
"Justin B. Richland continues his study of the relationship between American law and government and Native American law and tribal governance in his new manuscript Cooperation without Submission: Indigenous Jurisdictions in Native Nation-US Engagements. Richland looks at the way Native Americans and government officials talk about their relationship and seek to resolve conflicts over the extent of Native American authority in tribal lands when it conflicts with federal law and policy. The American federal government is supposed to engage in meaningful consultations with the tribes about issues that affect the tribes under long standing Federal law which accorded the federal government the responsibility of a trustee to the tribes. It requires the government to act in the best interest of the tribes and to interpret agreements with tribes in a way that respects their rights and interests. At least partly based on a patronizing view of Native Americans, the law has also sought to protect the interests of the tribes from those who might take advantage of them. In Cooperation without Submission, Richland looks closely at the language employed by both sides in consultations between tribes and government agencies focusing on the Hopi tribe but also discussing other cases. Richland shows how tribes conduct these meetings using language that demonstrates their commitment to nation-to -nation interdependency, while federal agents appear to approach these consultations with the assumption that federal l aw is supreme and ultimately authoritative"--