In The Courts Of The Conqueror: The 10 Worst Indian Law Cases Ever Decided, by Walter R. Echo-Hawk

Most of the people who read this book, especially those who get to the finish of nearly 500 pages of overheated rhetoric, are going to like this book. However, at the end of this book, just before the afterword, the author states, adapting a well-known quote by Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce tribe, that after writing this book he would no longer try cases relating to native American law but would retire to a peaceful plot of land. That is definitely for the best, as this book shows all the hallmarks of someone who is far too close to the material that they write about it to do a good job at appealing to those who are not already convinced of his premises. Indeed, this book rests on some pretty seriously false premises, including a belief in the existence of something called international law (which, properly speaking, is only international treaty, with as much worth as the treaties written between the United States government and various tribes over the course of its history). Given that the author mistakes the treaty law of the United Nations, citing the UN Declaration of Rights as a law rather than a treaty that is not binding on states that have not approved it (like the United States), this book as a whole is rough sledding, filled with a lot of bogus reasoning and assumptions of facts not in evidence.

Among the most tiresome aspects of this book is the way that the author’s casual anti-Christian attitudes and anti-white racism makes the author’s points, even the few valid ones, rather difficult to handle for those who are both white and Christian (as I happen to be). The author continually misrepresents the Bible and shows himself to be such an anti-Christian bigot that it makes this reader seriously consider the possibility that genocide may be a useful option in dealing with recalcitrant minorities who continually seek to antagonize majority populations by claiming some nonexistent sacrosanct right to exist no matter how irritating and annoying they are and who seek to exploit and attack majority populations in defense of imaginary or grossly exaggerated historical losses. It must be admitted, though, that not everything the author talks about is ridiculous. The American Indians have suffered a great deal, and the violation of treaties that were meant to guarantee them security to land is a serious problem deserving of compensation. Moreover, certain agencies of the federal government have, it would appear, specifically sought to deny tribes important religious and cultural rights that other peoples deem sacrosanct. In addition to that, the author does point out–and not inaccurately–that minority religious beliefs, especially those of an unorthodox nature, are in deep danger of suffering due to majority tyranny, and this reader can speak from experience that being a part of an unorthodox religious minority can be a frustrating experience full of casual bigotry. It is only to be regretted that the author is so unable to win over a reader who come from a different perspective because he is so intensely partisan in support of his own cause.

Overall, this book suffers from the way that the author frames the United States Supreme Court as being a court of the conqueror and as lacking in legitimacy. If the author accuses the Supreme Court of being corrupt–and it certainly has been at times, he comes from a point of view that includes corrupt tribal leadership that has no leg to stand on to criticize anyone else as being corrupt. Similarly, if the author accuses the conservative judges of the last forty years or so as being opportunistic in their search for tactical ways lacking in principles to remove rights from tribes, his own presentation is similarly lacking in principles but tactical and focused on the identity politics of giving as much power and freedom to tribes as possible, even when they seek to mock and exploit the well-being of the greater society in which they are a somewhat parasitic part. If majority tyranny is a great evil–and it is–attempts at minority tyranny are even more inadmissible, no matter how popular they are in the contemporary mania for identity politics that exists and which this book is deeply infected by.

In terms of its contents, this book is divided into four parts and fifteen chapters, which generally begin with an entertaining (if highly biased) drawing reflecting the author’s point of view. The book begins with acknowledgements and a foreword by Patricia Limerick. This is followed by three chapters that discuss the problems that the author sees in tribes dealing with courts (I), specifically the courts as representing a conquering power (1), a context for understanding Native American issues that is highly biased (2) against settler norms, and the dark side of Federal Indian law (3). The next section of the book examines affairs of the living (II), namely the cases of Johnson v. Minish (4), where tribes lost title to land, Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia, where tribes were denied relief because they were not foreign nations (5), Connors vs. United States & Cheyenne Indians, about the legality of the Indian Wars (which were, in general, definitely legal) (6), Lone Wolf vs. Hitchcock, on the breaking of treaties (7), United States vs. Sandoval, on guardianship (8), and in re adoption of John Doe vs. Heim, on the taking of tribal children (9). The third part of the book deals with the spirit world, where the author is at his most heathen (III), with chapters on Wana the Bear vs. Community Construction, about the seizure and holding of dead native Americans (10), Employment Division vs. Smith, on the loss of native religious freedoms (11), Lyng vs. Northwest Indian Cemetary Association, on the loss of tribal religious sites (12), and Tee-Hit-Ton Indians vs. United States, on the confiscation of tribal habitats (13). The fourth part of the book consists of the author’s attempts to provide his own prescription for law and culture (IV), namely questioning whether genocide was legal (it was) (14), and reforming the dark side of Federal Indian law (15). The book then ends with an afterword by Charles Wilkinson, endnotes, and an index.