Braid of Feathers: American Indian Law and Contemporary Tribal Life

by Frank Pommersheim

Book Overview

In this text, Frank Pommersheim, who lived and worked on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation for ten years, challenges the dominant legal history of American Indians and their tribes - a history that concedes far too much power to the laws and courts of the conqueror. Writing from the perspective of the reservation and contemporary Indian life, Pommersheim makes an urgent call for the advancement of tribal sovereignty and of tribal court systems...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520088573
• ISBN13: 9780520088573
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 267 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Review of Braid of Feathers

I like thin books with thick subject matter. I also like book titles that herald the contents. This book does both. In an essay of 200 pages, Frank Pommersheim, a Lakota tribal judge, artfully braids together the variegated feathers of tribal sovereignty. Experience, Culture, History, Language, Politics, and Law, not just Acts of Congress (treaties, statutes), decisions of the United States Supreme Court, and executive action (orders and regulations) shape, limit, and ultimately enhance or diminish tribal sovereignty. The author, sometimes poetically, sometimes polemically, but always pointedly argues that tribal courts are the fundamental institution of legitimate, authentic tribal self-determination.