A Lawyer in Indian Country: A Memoir by Alvin J. Ziontz Charles Wilkinson

Abstract

 OHQ vol. 111, no. 2 Buildingonitslonghistoryof Jewishprominence in commerce,politics,and social welfare, by the 1980s, the Pacific West had cemented its reputation as an area where“Jewish institutions and philanthropies would gain unprecedented visibility” and “Jewish influence in civic life would reach unprecedented proportions” (p. 212). According to the authors, even in the twenty-first century, the Pacific Coast Jewish communities continue to display the characteristics they exhibited from the beginning — concentration in larger urban centers,cultural diversity, and commercial, philanthropic, and professional leadership. And with Los Angeles now not only the regional center but also a leading city in the nation,the Jewish communities up and down the coast aspire to play a more central role in the national Jewish community, one that would shift the seat of American Jewish leadership to the West. Will the future of American Jewish history be dominated by “multiple centers, competing ideologies, and contending elites,” as Eisenberg, Kahn, and Toll project (p. 224)? Surely this is not a new phenomenon. One of the main strengths of Jews of the Pacific Coast is that it reframes its material from a rather innovative regional perspective , an approach that is just beginning to be seriously utilized in the study of American Jewish history. At the same time, some of the information presented in the book has been repackaged from previous publications by the three authors and at times appears derivative. The bibliography cites eight previous articles and books by Eisenberg,seven by Kahn,and no less than fifteen by Toll, so some of the book’s content is already familiar to scholars. Despite this drawback, the book provides a valuable contribution to our understanding of the vital but understudied role of western Jews in the history of the American Jewish community. Jeanne Abrams University of Denver A Lawyer in Indian Country: A Memoir by Alvin J. Ziontz foreword by Charles Wilkinson University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2008. Notes, selected bibliography, index. 300 pages. $27.95 cloth. Alvin Ziontz was present at the dawning of the modern struggle for Indian sovereignty.Meeting in Federal District Judge George Boldt’s Tacoma,Washington,courtroom onAugust 27, 1973, he was one of four counsels for the plaintiffs in the historic trial, U.S. v. Washington. The climactic legal battle pitted tribal efforts to assert treaty-guaranteed rights to fish against the bullying tactics of the State of Washington to deny those rights. “This would be a fight,” the author believed,“unlike any other the state had waged against Indians” (p. 101). When rock-ribbed Republican Judge Boldt delivered his decision on Lincoln’s birthday,February 12, 1974,treaty Indians emerged with a resounding legal victory and a vastly strengthened sense of sovereignty and cultural importance. A Lawyer in Indian Country is a compelling legal and personal story,providing readers with a first-hand account of a person who nearly failed in the University of Chicago Law School but subsequently acquired a profound sense of social commitment representing Indian tribes. The product of a Jewish working-class upbringing in Chicago (his father owned a tavern), Ziontz moved to Seattle with his wife Lennie in 1954,after a two-year stint in the U.S. Army. He first hired on as a clerk and then as a lawyer with a manic-depressive whose lengthy absences left the author to find his own way through the worldly art of practicing law. The author’s entrée into Indian law began in 1957, when he met Pat Wilkie, a North Dakota Chippewa who had married a Makah woman. Working on small legal cases for the Wilkies and a few other Indians led Ziontz further into “the little known and arcane field of Indian  Reviews law”(p.42).With two other lawyers,he formed a small firm, with the partners sharing equally in all revenue beyond expenses.As a member of Seattle’sAmericanCivilLibertiesUnion,Ziontz also took part in a legal case against the city’s police department, in the process nudging the mostly white officers slowly in the direction of modern race relations. It was the author’s ties to the Makah people and their struggles with other Puget Sound Indians to assert their...