Organizing the Lakota

The Political Economy of the New Deal on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Reservations

Thomas Biolsi

• Publisher: University of Arizona Press
• Year: 1992
• Print ISBN: 9780816518852, 9780816511273
• eBook ISBN: 9780816544462
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

In 1933 the United States Office of Indian Affairs began a major reform of Indian policy, organizing tribal governments under the provisions of the Indian Reorganization Act and turning over the administration of reservations to these new bodies. Organizing the Lakota considers the implementation of this act among the Lakota (Western Sioux or Teton Dakota) from 1933 through 1945.

Biolsi pays particular attention to the administrative means by which the OIA retained the power to design and implement tribal "self-government" as well as the power to control the flow of critical resources—rations, relief employment, credit—to the reservations. He also shows how this imbalance of power between the tribes and the federal bureaucracy influenced politics on the reservations, and argues that the crisis of authority faced by the Lakota tribal governments among their own would-be constituents—most dramatically demonstrated by the 1973 Wounded Knee occupation—is a direct result of their disempowerment by the United States.

Table of contents

• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Tables
• Note on Lakota Orthography
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Domination, Resignation, and Dependence
• 2. Tribal Politics before the New Deal
• 3. The New Deal Comes to Lakota Country
• 4. Establishing Tribal Government
• 5. The New Deal and the Artificial Economies: Reinforced Dependence
• 6. Disempowering Tribal Government
• 7. The Crisis of Authority in Tribal Government
• Conclusion
• List of Abbreviations
• Notes
• References
• Index