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Marjane Ambler. Breaking the Iron Bonds: Indian Control of Energy Development, 1990. The author discusses the history of Indian attempts to gain control of their energy resources: obtaining ownership, the right to negotiate the terms of leases and royalties, and the authority to distribute the proceeds of mineral income and to tax energy companies.
Donald J. Berthrong. The Southern Cheyenne, 1963. Historian Berthrong provides a history of the Southern Cheyenne from the late 17th century to 1875.
Thomas Biolsi. “Deadliest Enemies”: Law and the Making of Race Relations On and Off Rosebud Reservation, 2001. Anthropologist Biolsi discusses the history of Indian-White relations on and around Rosebud Reservation and how legal decisions have shaped these relations. He considers jurisdictional issues about highway policing, liquor sales, and reservation boundaries.
Sebastian Felix Braun. Buffalo Inc.: American Indians and Economic Development, 2008. Anthropologist Braun did fieldwork at Cheyenne River reservation during 2000-2001. His book focuses on the efforts of the Cheyenne River Sioux to develop a commercial buffalo enterprise and the repercussions of the project.
Raymond J. DeMallie, ed. Handbook of North American Indians: Plains, v. 13, 2 pts., 2001. This volume provides sketches of the histories and cultures of the Plains tribes up to the present.
Raymond J. DeMallie, ed. The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk’s Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt, 1984. Black Elk’s narratives about his life in prereservation and Pine Ridge reservation times are given commentary by editor and anthropologist DeMallie.
Hugh A. Dempsey. Big Bear: The End of Freedom, 1984. This is a biography of Big Bear, born in 1825. He was a leader of the Plains Cree in Canada who tried to achieve peace with the Canadian government. He was arrested and died in 1888. His descendants live on Rocky Boy Reservation.
John C. Ewers. The Blackfeet: Raiders on the Northwestern Plains, 1958. Anthropologist Ewers provides a history of the Montana Blackfeet from the late 18th century to the early reservation years.
John C. Ewers. The Horse in Blackfoot Indian Culture with Comparative Material from Other Western Tribes, 1955. Ewers’s study is a detailed look at how the horse diffused through the plains and how its introduction changed Plains Indian societies.
Loretta Fowler. The Arapaho, 2006 (rev. ed.). This book is written for a general audience and compares Northern and Southern Arapaho history, culture, and social organization up to the present.
Loretta Fowler. Arapahoe Politics, 1851-1978, 1982. Anthropologist Fowler examines changes in Northern Arapaho leadership in the 19th and 20th centuries as leaders coped with economic and other changes.
Loretta Fowler. The Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Great Plains, 2003. The author provides an introduction to the archaeology and an overview of the cultures and histories of upland and prairie Plains tribes, with chapters on trade relations, treaties and American expansion, reservation life, and the self-determination or sovereignty era.
Fowler, Loretta. Shared Symbols, Contested Meanings: Gros Ventre Culture and History, 1778-1984, 1987. Anthropologist Fowler provides an overview of Gros Ventre history, including economic activity, and a discussion of relations between the Gros Ventres and Assiniboines on Fort Belknap reservation. The book also discusses political and ritual revivalism in the 1970s and 1980s.
Loretta Fowler. “Tribal Sovereignty Movements Compared: The Plains Region,” in Beyond Red Power: American Indian Politics and Activism since 1900, eds. Daniel M. Cobb and Loretta Fowler, 2007. The author compares the ways sovereignty agendas are implemented in the upland plains reservations of South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and in western Oklahoma.
Rodney Frey. The World of Crow Indians, 1987. Anthropologist Frey studied contemporary Crow life. He focuses on ritual and kinship.
Elizabeth S. Grobsmith. Lakota of the Rosebud, 1981. Anthropologist Grobsmith did fieldwork on Rosebud reservation in 1973-74. Her focus is on political organization and politics during the American Indian Movement’s activity there, economics, community ritual and religion, language and education.
William T. Hagan. United States-Comanche Relations: The Reservation Years, 1976. Historian Hagan provides a history from 1867 through the early reservation years when cattle leasing influenced reservation politics.
Frederick E. Hoxie. The Crow, 1989. Written for a general audience, this book by historian Hoxie covers the early 19th century to the 1980s.
Sharon O’Brien. “Cheyenne River Sioux” in American Indian Tribal Governments, by Sharon O’Brien, 1989. Anthropologist O’Brien gives an overview of the history of these Sioux from the treaty era through the early reservation years, the New Deal, and the Oahe Dam settlement. She provides information on economic development and tribal government.
Peter Iverson. When Indians Became Cowboys: Native Peoples and Cattle Ranching in the American West, 1994. Historian Iverson discusses the efforts of western tribes to raise cattle and the obstacles they faced from United States policy. He focuses on the northern plains and the Southwest, and he explains how cattle ranching became a way of life that was socially and culturally rewarding for Indians.
Alice Beck Kehoe. The Ghost Dance: Ethnohistory and Revitalization, 1989. Anthropologist Kehoe provides a history of the Ghost Dance movement, a discussion of the massacre at Wounded Knee, and an overview of other social and religious movements aimed at revitalization of the way of life of oppressed people (including AIM’s Wounded Knee occupation in 1973).
Michael L. Lawson. Dammed Indians Revisited: The Continuing History of the Pick-Sloan Plan and the Missouri River Sioux, 2009. Historian Lawson documents the struggle of leaders at Cheyenne River and Standing Rock to prevent the flooding of their reservations from the Oahe Dam, then for adequate compensation for the rehabilitation of their communities once the project was complete.
Allison Fuss Mellis. Riding Buffaloes and Broncos: Rodeo and Native Traditions in the Northern Great Plains, 2003. Historian Mellis explores how 19th and 20th century rodeo was a vehicle to strengthen Indian identity and social ties and reinforce Native values. She focuses on Crow, Pine Ridge, Rosebud, and Northern Cheyenne reservations.
Mindy J. Morgan. The Bearer of This Letter: Language Ideologies, Literacy Practices, and the Fort Belknap Indian Community, 2009. Anthropologist Morgan did fieldwork on Fort Belknap, where she assisted the Assiniboines in the development of a language program for the teaching and preservation of the native language during 1996-97.
James Mooney. Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians, 1898. Mooney sketches Kiowa history in the 19th century.
James C. Olson, Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem, 1965. Historian Olson discusses Red Cloud’s leadership during the treaty negotiations of the 1860s and subsequent negotiations over reservation boundaries and conditions. Red Cloud’s story helps illuminate relations between Sioux and the United States. Olson also discusses internal Sioux politics and rivalries.
Kathleen Ann Pickering. Lakota Culture, World Economy, 2000. Anthropologist Pickering did fieldwork on Pine Ridge and Rosebud during 1991-93. She studied the contemporary economy, focusing on household consumption and various kinds of household production, and showing how Lakota identity shaped and was shaped by the reservation economy. She gives detailed information on microenterprises.
Willard H. Rollings. The Comanche, 1989. Historian Rollings writes for a general audience and covers Comanche history from the 18th century to the 1980s.
Paul C. Rosier. Rebirth of the Blackfeet Nation, 1912-1954, 2001. Historian Rosier gives a detailed history of the business committee leaders’ efforts to gain control over tribal resources, including oil.
Mary Jane Schneider. “Standing Rock Reservation” in North Dakota’s Indian Heritage, 1990. Anthropologist Schneider gives an overview of the history of the Sioux of Standing Rock.
Henry E. Stamm, IV. People of the Wind River: The Eastern Shoshones, 1825-1900, 1999. Historian Stamm provides a history of the Eastern Shoshone in prereservation times and during the early years of reservation settlement.
Sam Stanley, ed. American Indian Economic Development, 1978. Though dated now, these essays and the editor’s comparative analysis provide good background on the issue of economic development in American Indian communities. The tribes discussed are Navajo (Arizona and New Mexico), Lummi (Washington), Morongo (California), Pine Ridge Sioux, Oklahoma Cherokee, Passamaquoddy (Maine), and Papago (Arizona).
Orlan J. Svingen. The Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation, 1877-1900, 1993. This book provides a history of reservation political and economic life in the late 19th century.
Veronica E. Velarde Tiller. Tiller’s Guide to Indian Country, 2005. The guide profiles all the federally recognized tribes in the country. It provides information on land status, enrollment, government, economic development, education, and infrastructure, and gives a brief overview of each tribe’s history.
Paula L. Wagoner. “They Treated Us Just Like Indians”: The Worlds of Bennett County, South Dakota, 2002. Anthropologist Wagoner did fieldwork in Bennett County (an area ceded by the Pine Ridge Sioux in 1910 where there still were Sioux living on allotments) during 1997. Her focus is on the meaning of Fullblood, Mixedblood, and White identities and the relations between people who define themselves thus. She considers land issues and conflict over the Indian mascot at the high school.
Richard White. “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A New History of the American West, 1991. Historian White describes the American West as a series of urban enclaves (California, for example) and marginalized rural areas, all with a history of dependence on the federal government. The rural region (South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming, for example) is arid, has a declining population, and has an economy based on extractive industries. Minorities are exploited and large scale, capital-intensive agriculture crowds out small farms and ranches. The demand for energy from the urban centers calls for dams and strip mining in the rural West. Non-Indians here are economically marginalized; Indians even more so.
John R. Wunder. The Kiowa, 1989. This book is written for a general audience and provides an overview of Kiowa history from the 18th century to the 1970s.