Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Summer 2000
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 20, No. 3, Summer 2000, pp. 247-48.
Abstract
In his preface, Donald Fixico asserts that Native American "tribes had a special relationship with the earth." Through six case studies of individuals or groups (Part One), he discusses how his "ancestors and other Indian people ... suffered at the hands of American capitalists in this age of greed, the twentieth century." Five essays on recent efforts to defend resources (Part Two) cover institutional strategies among tribal governments. Fixico concludes that "until capitalistic attitudes are corrected and the preservation of the earth's diminishing resources become a priority, we will continue to destroy ourselves." Most chapters examine experiences of Plains Indian nations and peoples.
Fixico lists "six essential elements" of Indian society: person, family, clan or society, community, nation, and spirituality. Each chapter in Part One examines one or more of these elements. He describes the impact of capitalism, for example, on "person" and "family" in two essays on Oklahoma oil scandals. To demonstrate capitalism's devastation of an Indian "self," he revisits the case of Jackson Barnett, a wealthy Muscogee man of "few and simple pleasures," who died with a "spirit confused and torn." Fixico portrays Barnett as a pawn of others even more unyieldingly than did Angie Debo in And Still the Waters Run (1940). The next chapter, "The Osage Murders and Oil," also emphasizes personalities over sociopolitical sttucture.
Other chapters focus more on institutions. The Chippewa fishing rights controversy demonstrates that "clan or society has a fundamental role in constituting the internal nature of Native Americans." Thus, despite the disharmony and violence of the controversy, there has been "a revitalization of tradition among the Chippewa . . . and the youth are identifying with their clans again." In the Chippewa case and an account of Lakota claims to the Black Hills, Fixico suggests tribal institutions and spirituality insulate individuals from the destructive elements of capitalism.
Part Two examines strategies by Indian nations to defend natural resources. Chapter 7, describing energy resources on Indian lands ~nd the efforts of Indian leaders to protect them, is somewhat outdated both factually and conceptually. Fixico's claim that "the 'Mother Earth' concept is one of the few universal concepts among American Indians" does not address Sam Gill's critique of this assertion in Mother Earth (1987).
Two relatively strong chapters (one on the emergence of the Council of Energy Resource Tribes and one on tribal leaders' approaches to environmental issues) analyze the processes
Comments
Copyright 2000 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln