SOURCE: A review of American Indian Policy in the Twentieth Century, in Southwest Review, Vol. 70, No. 4, Autumn, 1985, pp. 550-51.

In the following excerpt, the critic states that the essays contained in Deloria's American Indian Policy in the Twentieth Century "contain valuable information of interest to scholars and general readers alike."

American Indian Policy in the Twentieth Century, edited by Vine Deloria, Jr., presents eleven essays that examine several often ignored areas in Indian history. Tom Holm, for example, in "The Crisis in Tribal Government," suggests that Wounded Knee II was not a "typical" inner city riot, but instead was an attempt to reinstate traditional Sioux values in that tribe's complicated political system. In an entirely different vein, Mary Wallace's "The Supreme Court and Indian Water Rights" shows how the Court's recent decisions have moved away from the long-standing Winters doctrine, which implicitly reserved Indian water rights, toward allowing...