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Great Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for

Spring 2003

Review of Anti-Indianism in Modern America: A Voice from Tatekeya's By Elizabeth Cook-Lynn

Jacki Thompson-Rand University of , [email protected]

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Thompson-Rand, Jacki, "Review of Anti-Indianism in Modern America: A Voice from Tatekeya's Earth By Elizabeth Cook-Lynn" (2003). Great Plains Quarterly. 2387. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/2387

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. 138 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SPRING 2003

tory departments. Monographs, exhibitions, documentaries, and Disney movies perpetu­ ate sanitized American historical narratives. The responsibility to correct a seemingly irre­ versible erasure falls to American Indian Stud­ ies, Native scholars, and Native fiction writers. For Cook-Lynn, the problematic "tribeless" voice of some Indian fiction writers produces a literature that offers emotional satisfaction, but little substantiated tribal knowledges. In the most compelling essay, which dis­ cusses the Indian-white reconciliation move­ Anti-Indianism in Modern America: A Voice from ment in , Cook-Lynn connects Tatekeya's Earth. By Elizabeth Cook-Lynn. contemporary issues of land reform, water Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2001. rights, and the Pick-Sloan plan with the shell xii + 225 pp. Notes, bibliographical references. game of federal fiduciary and trust responsi­ $26.95. bilities, tribal sovereignty, and relentless ef­ forts to expand state authority over tribal The fertile mind of Elizabeth Cook-Lynn governments. For Cook-Lynn reconciliation has produced essays, lectures, and papers on is unconscionable and impossible while the an array of issues confronting Native America, state continues to dispossess Indians of land, a selection of them presented here. Writing destroy Indian economies, and simultaneously from a Dakota-centered view, Cook-Lynn pro­ undermine sovereignty and evade trust respon­ vides analysis and commentary on oppression sibilities. As a youthful witness to her father's that arises and takes shape out of language, involvement in tribal affairs and observer of knowledge production, and "misrepresentations the destructive impact of Pick-Sloan, she pro­ of Indian people on the part of individuals vides a "Native voice" that moves the study of and institutions. Literature, federal Indian federal Indian policies from abstraction to policies, the academy, American Indian Stud­ human experience. ies, scholarly theoretical trends, and art are The authority of this strong and useful col­ indices to Anti-Indian ism in America. lection is undermined only by Cook-Lynn's Cook-Lynn's authoritative assessment of essay on the late Michael Dorris. Limited re­ the state of Native American Literary Studies sources of a small Native academic and writ­ provides insight into her appreciation of the ing community must be devoted to the complications and contradictions that colo­ productive critique of Native writers and schol­ nialism plants and perpetuates. She criticizes ars in the hope and anticipation of opening the academy and Native writers alike for Na­ new lines of inquiry. tive identity fraud, cooptation of Native aca­ As Robert Williams has cogently observed, demic elites, avoiding critique in Native "language is [and continues to bel the perfect literature, and Indian writers' preoccupation instrument of empire." Cook-Lynn's unspar­ with the slippery slopes of identity at the ex­ ing message is that disciplined language is also pense of pressing issues of tribal nationalism. a necessary instrument for contesting colo­ For Cook-Lynn, American Indian Studies, too, nialism. is failing if it is not first and foremost con­ cerned with the history and present state of JACKI THOMPSON RAND tribal political welfare. Department of History and American Indian The academy has successfully erased Indian and Native Studies Program history from the American narrative and his- University of Iowa