The Great Sioux Nation: Sitting in Judgment on America Roxanne DunbarOrtiz, Editor. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013.

Abstract

Great Sioux Nation: Sitting in Judgment on America Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, Editor. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013.The revised edition of Great Sioux Nation raises questions about not only the position of this sovereign nation within American borders but also about American political, legal, and cultural policies in contemporary and historical contexts. Clearly a product of the 1970s, a time of activism, anger, and political and cultural upheaval, this text bears witness to that change and contributes a verse that still resonates today for indigenous peoples. vast majority of the documents included are primary sources, such as witness testimony from the 1974 trial transcript in the case of the United States v. Consolidated Wounded Knee Cases on the motion to dismiss for want of jurisdiction, which was a hearing about the meaning of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 and whether it gave the United States permission to strip the Sioux Nation of its sovereignty and land. In addition to this testimony, the editor includes the full Fort Laramie excerpts from the court's decision to deny the Sioux Nation their sovereignty, newspaper clippings of trial coverage, brief contextual and historical overviews by well-known Native American scholars, post-trial statements from the defendants' attorney, a glossary of important cultural terms such as treaty, sovereign, tribe, and traditional, a comprehensive bibliography designed to guide further study, and sectional interludes of poetic words by Henry Crow Dog, a traditional Sioux elder and witness. For scholars interested in the activism of the 1970s, Great Sioux Nation contextualizes the broader activist impulse, raises questions about these issues that in many ways remain unresolved, and emphasizes the struggle over land, sovereignty, and terminology.Texts analyzing America focus on broad shifts in culture, economics, and politics, such as America in the Seventies (2004), Seventies: Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (2001), and Stayin' Alive: and the Last Days of the Working Class (2010). Some books spotlight remnants of 1960s activism such as Hidden 1970s: Histories of Radicalism (2010), which happily includes three chapters on indigenous movements and decolonization efforts. Philip J. Deloria writes in the foreword to this new edition, The writing seems to cry out with anxieties about form and legitimacy and authority that also say something about the 1970s (v).The Great Sioux Nation starts to become less heated in word choice, calmer and equally assertive, but more positive as it progresses from the writings of Simon Ortiz, Vine Deloria, Jr. …