Book Review

Canada and the United States

Paul C. Rosier's study of the Blackfeet Nation's acceptance and exercise of the Wheeler-Howard or Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) illustrates how simplistic has been the general portrayal of the IRA as a failure. Through extensive archival research, personal interviews, and the use of democratic political theory, Rosier brings the agency of Blackfeet political leaders to the fore. The struggles of contending intrareservation groups receive as much attention as their ongoing negotiations with federal administrators. Rosier's verdict that the IRA benefitted the Blackfeet is not born of naïveté.	1
Rosier broadens the scope of analysis of the IRA from the bleak economic decades preceding its passage in 1934 to 1954, well beyond the traditional stopping point of John Collier's resignation in 1945. This clearly shows not only that Blackfeet political activism cannot have hinged solely on the career of one man in Washington, D.C., but also that successful political organizing preceded both the IRA and the termination era.	2
Stark poverty on the Blackfeet reservation in the early twentieth century went unrelieved by any policy measures put in place by Office of Indian Affairs (OIA) administrators. This fact underpinned the desires of Blackfeet leaders of all political stripes to wrest some measure of control from the federal government. Most advocated developing their oil reserves in the face of OIA opposition. However, they could seldom concur about the contours of what should take the place of OIA paternalism. Wealthy Blackfeet elite used the Blackfeet Tribal Business Committee (BTBC) to facilitate their own economic interests and those of outside developers, while older, more impoverished residents favored per capita payments to equalize the distribution of tribal revenues. Achieving a meaningful and lasting compromise was an elusive but persistent goal.	. . .