| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Elmer R. Rusco. A Fateful Time: The Background and Legislative History of the Indian Reorganization Act. (Wilbur S. Shepperson Series in History and Humanities.) Reno: University of Nevada Press. 2000. Pp. xv, 363. $44.95.

Over time it has become increasingly clear that the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) in 1934 as a part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Indian New Deal was indeed a fateful act. All agree that it stands as one of a handful of the most important pieces of legislation affecting Indians, that it reversed long-standing policies of forced assimilation, and that it tried to base policy on the new ideology of cultural pluralism. But historians remain divided on the question of whether or not the IRA succeeded in its goal of greater Indian self-determination. Most scholars before the mid 1970s emphasized its positive achievements. Since the late 1970s, however, more and more have found faults and failure. 1

Elmer R. Rusco's exhaustive study of the IRA acknowledges its shortcomings, but overall he sides with supporters. In the preface, Rusco provides an excellent overview of existing literature on the IRA. In fact, much of this book covers the same ground as works by Kenneth R. Philp, Lawrence C. Kelly, Graham D. Taylor, Vine Deloria, Jr., and Clifford M. Lytle. Nonetheless, Rusco succeeds in finding important new areas of inquiry, insight, and interpretation, and he also enriches our understanding of dimensions of the IRA already studied by others. . . .

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