Yavapai-Apache scholar Maurice S. Crandall begins his deeply researched and engaging monograph with a common assertion about the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act in the Southwest: “Indians suffered under Spain and Mexico, but eventually ‘won’ their long struggle for the right to vote in U.S. courts” (3). Crandall argues that this triumphalist narrative is not supported by the historical record. Rather, in each colonial regime Indigenous peoples adapted electoral politics “to continue to secure the franchise,” to protect their communities and their political sovereignty, and “to challenge and subvert colonial power” (4). Analyzing data from the Pueblos of New Mexico, the Hopis of what is now northeastern Arizona, and the Yaquis and Tohono O’odham of the Sonoran borderlands, Crandall effectively argues that Indigenous communities were always electorates who adapted colonial political institutions to their own ends. Indigenous responses to political incorporation varied, but across time, space, and distinctive cultures the autonomy of the local community remained central to Indigenous peoples. As Indigenous electorates, they used colonial institutions, including the franchise, to safeguard their lands and protect as much sovereignty as possible under colonialism.Crandall analyzes how Indigenous political institutions adapted to divergent colonial agendas across three cycles of conquest. The Spanish sought to transform Indigenous peoples into citizens by imposing European systems of government on Indigenous communities. The Pueblos adopted a layer of Spanish-approved secular government to shield traditional religious governance from outsiders, to assert their autonomy as Indian republics, and to safeguard their lands. Hopi responses to Spanish government are lost to history except for evidence of a massacre at Awat’ovi, where Hopis destroyed the Spanish foothold in their homelands. After initial violence, the Yaquis of northwestern Sonora accepted their status as voting citizens but also later revolted (in part) to protect their elections from Spanish interference. The Tohono O’odham, whose homelands straddled the current US-Mexico border, never formed independent republics or incorporated into the Spanish electoral system because of Spanish abuse and neglect. The Mexican government (1821–46) declared all Indigenous peoples full citizens of the republic and merged Indigenous and Hispano electorates. This resulted in rebellions of Pueblos and Yaquis in defense of their local autonomy. Yaqui military engagements led to deportations, and many Yaquis fled to what became Arizona, where they lived as Mexican refugees whose indigeneity was constantly questioned. The Hopis remained isolated, while the O’odham saw the collapse of their missions and increased Apache raids. The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that brought the region into the United States allowed for all Mexican citizens to claim US citizenship. US Indian law, however, regarded Indigenous electorates not as citizens but, rather, as “wards” under federal supervision. This ended their participation in politics outside of their communities. The one debate was over the status of the Pueblos, whom many Americans considered to be “civilized” enough to be citizens. Pueblo leaders, however, justifiably feared that US citizenship would lead to land alienation and petitioned to be recognized as Indians.The broad outlines of these stories are familiar to those conversant with borderlands scholarship, but Crandall provides a unique Indigenous perspective that upends American exceptionalism. Drawing on a rich variety of sources from official records to oral histories, Crandall offers a nuanced narrative that privileges Indigenous accounts and centers his analysis in Indigenous political ideologies deeply rooted in sacred stories. Crandall’s perceptive analysis makes clear that the only colonial power that did not regard Indigenous borderlands peoples as worthy of citizenship was the one that gets all the credit for finally granting it four centuries after the Spanish.