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Book Reviews
| David R. M. Beck. The Struggle for Self-Determination: History of the Menominee Indians since 1854. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. Pp. 290. Bibliography. Figure. Illustrations. Index. Maps. Photographs. Tables. Cloth, $49.95.
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In The Struggle for Self-Determination: History of the Menominee Indians since 1854, David Beck provides more than a tribal history of Wisconsin's Menominee Indians. Beginning with the immediate post-treaty period, Beck's narrative provides us with a clear, defensible, and well-reasoned explanation of how the Menominees more than merely survived attempts in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to diminish their land base, steal their resources, and even terminate their tribal status. This work is so much more than a study of survival; instead, it is a model of how the evolving theoretical use of agency can serve to explain native history, either on tribal, national, or regional levels. What is perhaps most refreshing about this work is that Beck moves beyond the traditional or simple chronology to a substantive thematic analysis of the Menominee experience over the past century and a half. |
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As a way of introducing this study, the author explains with exceptional clarity and expertise the treaties that created and further defined the Menominee reservation in Wisconsin. Further, Beck proves his theories regarding Menominee survival and resistance very early on in his description and analysis of the impact of post-treaty missionary activity and economic assault through the outright theft of Menominee timber in the late-nineteenth century. What is unique and refreshing about Beck's approach, however, is that he never paints the Menominees as a unified body struggling against outside forces of manipulation and oppression. Rather, at every step in his analysis he thoughtfully and clearly explains the cultural, geographic, and political divisions within Menominee society. This is especially important because in later years, particularly during and immediately following the termination period, the tribe was anything but unified in either its response to outside pressures or internal debates. |
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