How Allotment-Era Literature Can Inform Current Controversies about Tribal Jurisdiction and Reservation Diminishment

Abstract

In a previous piece, ‘Unjustifiable Expectations: Laying to Rest the Ghosts of Allotment-Era Settlers,’ the author argued that a review of historical newspaper articles showed that the expectations of non-Indians who purchased lands on Sioux reservations in South Dakota during the allotment era above tribes disappearing were not justifiable because they were rooted in an expectation of continued injustice towards tribes. The article thus concluded that the Supreme Court should not presume that allotment-era settlers had justifiable expectations when it decided reservation diminishment and tribal jurisdiction cases. This article addresses whether allotment era literature pertaining to Sioux peoples can similarly help inform such cases. Although the results are more mixed, particularly with non-Indian-authored fiction, the works of Native writers such as Luther Standing Bear, Charles Eastman, and particularly Zitkala-Ša are helpful in explicating the injustices in the federal government’s land dealings with tribes, as was a nonfiction work by non-Native historian and poet Doane Robinson.