Reclaiming the Reservation: Histories of Indian Sovereignty Suppressed and Renewed

Abstract

In June 2021, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that tribal police have “the authority to detain temporarily and to search a non–Native American traveling on a public right-of-way running through a reservation for potential violations of state and federal law.”1 A win for advocates of Native nations’ sovereignty, the decision's unanimity elided a deeply contested history of tribal governmental power exercised over non-Indians. Readers of Alexandra Harmon's Reclaiming the Reservation: Histories of Indian Sovereignty Suppressed and Renewed know how significant the Court's decision in United States v. Cooley is, though. Her monograph masterfully documents the revitalization of tribal governments that began asserting their power with more force and fervor in the 1960s and ’70s. Specifically, Harmon charts the history of tribal policing of non-Indians on reservation land, a power never ceded to the United States but previously limitedly practiced by many nations. Pressures—such destructive behavior by non-Indians on and/or to tribal lands—and opportunities produced new urgency to reasserting tribal governance.Harmon's monograph is largely a case study of the Quinault and Suquamish nations, whose homelands are in the Pacific Northwest and whose respective reservations are surrounded by Washington State. Harmon's work moves gracefully from specific contexts, people, and politics to national movements and federal trends. She illuminates the power of pan-tribal organizations, the specific concerns of regional indigenous alliances, and the particularities of Quinault and Suquamish history. Reclaiming the Reservation culminates with Harmon's analysis of the 1978 Supreme Court case Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, in which the Supreme Court ruled that tribal courts did not have jurisdiction over non-Indians. Harmon ends her work by tracing the effects of Court's decision and the ways in which tribal governments have strengthened their power even in Oliphant's wake. Harmon's contribution is aided by extensive archival work, oral histories, and Harmon's own career in the field.In a strong monograph, Harmon's strongest chapter is her analysis (though take-down might be a more appropriate description) of Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist's majority opinion in Oliphant. Indeed, this chapter is the heart of—the call-to-action for—Reclaiming the Reservation. Harmon notes that “[m]ost of the court opinion was a narrative about the intentions of non-Indian legislators, administrators, legal advisors, and jurists—people who had roles in governing the United States and creating the records from which Rehnquist crafted his story” (p. 276). Harmon's work is a self-conscious corrective to a court opinion that obfuscated thicker histories produced by Indigenous people. As Harmon notes in her introduction, she purposefully casts Indians as the “principal protagonists,” centering “experiences little known outside Indian country” (p. 12). What emerges is a nuanced, rich exploration of sovereignty's fluidity and the determination of Indian people to create communities of integrity. The history that Harmon relates is the ultimate antidote to Rehnquist's “blinkered focus” on a non-Indian history Harmon proves selective and disingenuous (p. 262). Ultimately, Reclaiming the Reservation reminds its reader of history's centrality to law and the dangers of practicing the latter without the former.In her conclusion, Harmon situates her narrative as part of Native peoples’ ongoing project of maintaining and sharpening their tools of self-determination. Harmon's work examines one of the tools used in that battle: American law. In her final pages, she hints at the ultimate paradox of this situation—that in order to weaken the bonds of colonialism, Native Americans have used the colonial legal system. Rather than dismantle the system itself, this practice potentially lends credence to it. Yet Harmon suggests that the fight for Indigenous sovereignty transcends American law, that it draws on Indigenous cultures, legal communities, and communal histories. As she concludes her work, then, Harmon points the way for future scholars.