American Indian Studies

Against long odds, the Anishinaabeg resisted removal, retaining thousands of acres of their homeland in what is now Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Their success rested partly on their roles as sellers of natural resources and buyers of trade goods, which made them key players in the political economy of plunder that drove white settlement and U.S. development in the Old Northwest. But, as Michael Witgen demonstrates, the credit for Native persistence rested with the Anishinaabeg themselves. Outnumbering white settlers well into the nineteenth century, they leveraged their political savvy to advance a dual citizenship that enabled mixed-race tribal members to lay claim to a place in U.S. civil society. Telling the stories of mixed-race traders and missionaries, tribal leaders and territorial governors, Witgen challenges our assumptions about the inevitability of U.S. expansion.

Native Americans are disproportionately represented as offenders in the U.S. criminal justice system. Routledge Handbook on Native American Justice Issues is an authoritative volume that provides an overview of the state of American Indigenous populations and their contact with justice concerns and the criminal justice system.

Paper Sovereigns demonstrates that treaty making and breaking in the early North Atlantic world involved complex struggles and crosscultural systems of negotiation, establishing Native American treaties as a powerful influence on European colonization.

This set explores treaties and sovereignty in depth. Here you can find:
v. 1: Thematic essays on treaty history and issues
v. 2: Background and the full text of some treaties
v. 3: Detailed chronology and biographies of influential people

With an easy-to-understand question and answer format, this book discusses tribal power; civil and criminal jurisdiction on reservations; hunting, fishing, and water rights; taxation; and more.

Find discussions of a variety of legal terms — ones unique to American Indian issues as well as more common ones explained in the Native American context.