In 1933 the United States Office of Indian Affairs, under the commissionership of John Collier, began a major reform of Indian policy. Known as the Indian New Deal, the official reform agenda included organizing tribal governments under the provisions of the Indian Reorganization Act and turning over the administration of reservations to these new bodies. Organizing the Lakota considers the implementation of this act among the Lakota (Western Sioux or Teton Dakota) of the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations in South Dakota from 1933 through 1945. Based primarily upon Office of Indian Affairs records and fieldwork on the reservations, it focuses on the ways in which tribal organization, which was officially intended to empower the tribes, ultimately failed to transfer power from the OIA to the tribal governments. Biolsi pays particular attention to the administrative means by which the OIA retained the power to design and implement tribal "self-government", as well as the power to control the flow of critical resources - rations, relief employment, credit - to the reservations. He also shows how this imbalance of power between the tribes and the federal bureaucracy influenced politics on the reservations, and he argues that the crisis of authority faced by the Lakota tribal governments among their own would-be constituents - most dramatically demonstrated by the 1973 Wounded Knee occupation - is a direct result of their disempowerment by the United States.

In 1969 Vine Deloria, Jr., in his controversial book Custer Died for Your Sins, criticized the anthropological community for its impersonal dissection of living Native American cultures. Twenty-five years later, anthropologists have become more sensitive to Native American concerns, and Indian people have become more active in fighting for accurate representations of their cultures. In this collection of essays, Indian and non-Indian scholars examine how the relationship between anthropology and Indians has changed over that quarter-century and show how controversial this issue remains. Practitioners of cultural anthropology, archaeology, education, and history provide multiple lenses through which to view how Deloria's message has been interpreted or misinterpreted. Among the contributions are comments on Deloria's criticisms, thoughts on the reburial issue, and views on the ethnographic study of specific peoples. A final contribution by Deloria himself puts the issue of anthropologist/Indian interaction in the context of the century's end. CONTENTS-Introduction: What's Changed, What Hasn't, Thomas Biolsi & Larry J. Zimmerman-Part One--Deloria Writes Back-Vine Deloria, Jr., in American Historiography, Herbert T. Hoover-Growing Up on Deloria: The Impact of His Work on a New Generation of Anthropologists, Elizabeth S. Grobsmith-Educating an Anthro: The Influence of Vine Deloria, Jr., Murray L. Wax-Part Two--Archaeology and American Indians-Why Have Archaeologists Thought That the Real Indians Were Dead and What Can We Do about It?, Randall H. McGuire-Anthropology and Responses to the Reburial Issue, Larry J. Zimmerman-Part Three-Ethnography and Colonialism-Here Come the Anthros, Cecil King-Beyond Ethics: Science, Friendship and Privacy, Marilyn Bentz: The Anthropological Construction of Indians: Haviland Scudder Mekeel and the Search for the Primitive in Lakota Country, Thomas Biolsi-Informant as Critic: Conducting Research on a Dispute between Iroquoianist Scholars and Traditional Iroquois, Gail Landsman: The End of Anthropology (at Hopi)?, Peter Whiteley-Conclusion: Anthros, Indians and Planetary Reality, Vine Deloria, Jr.-

A critical exploration of how modernity and progress were imposed on the people and land of rural South Dakota The Rosebud Country, comprising four counties in rural South Dakota, was first established as the Rosebud Indian Reservation in 1889 to settle the Sicangu Lakota. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, white homesteaders arrived in the area and became the majority population. Today, the population of Rosebud Country is nearly evenly divided between Indians and whites. In Power and Progress on the Prairie, Thomas Biolsi traces how a variety of governmental actors, including public officials, bureaucrats, and experts in civil society, invented and applied ideas about modernity and progress to the people and the land. Through a series of case studies-programs to settle "surplus" Indian lands, to "civilize" the Indians, to "modernize" white farmers, to find strategic sites for nuclear missile silos, and to extend voting rights to Lakota people-Biolsi examines how these various "problems" came into focus for government experts and how remedies were devised and implemented. Drawing on theories of governmentality derived from Michel Foucault, Biolsi challenges the idea that the problems identified by state agents and the solutions they implemented were inevitable or rational. Rather, through fine-grained analysis of the impact of these programs on both the Lakota and white residents, he reveals that their underlying logic was too often arbitrary and devastating.

A critical exploration of how modernity and progress were imposed on the people and land of rural South Dakota The Rosebud Country, comprising four counties in rural South Dakota, was first established as the Rosebud Indian Reservation in 1889 to settle the Sicangu Lakota. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, white homesteaders arrived in the area and became the majority population. Today, the population of Rosebud Country is nearly evenly divided between Indians and whites. In Power and Progress on the Prairie, Thomas Biolsi traces how a variety of governmental actors, including public officials, bureaucrats, and experts in civil society, invented and applied ideas about modernity and progress to the people and the land. Through a series of case studies-programs to settle "surplus" Indian lands, to "civilize" the Indians, to "modernize" white farmers, to find strategic sites for nuclear missile silos, and to extend voting rights to Lakota people-Biolsi examines how these various "problems" came into focus for government experts and how remedies were devised and implemented. Drawing on theories of governmentality derived from Michel Foucault, Biolsi challenges the idea that the problems identified by state agents and the solutions they implemented were inevitable or rational. Rather, through fine-grained analysis of the impact of these programs on both the Lakota and white residents, he reveals that their underlying logic was too often arbitrary and devastating.

Racial tension between Native American and white people on and near Indian reservations is an ongoing problem in the United States. As far back as 1886, the Supreme Court said that "because of local ill feeling, the people of the United States where Indian tribes] are found are often their deadliest enemies." This book examines the history of troubled relations on and around Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota over the last three decades and asks why Lakota Indians and whites living there became hostile to one another. Thomas Biolsi's important study traces the origins of racial tension between Native Americans and whites to federal laws themselves, showing how the courts have created opposing political interests along race lines.
Drawing on local archival research and ethnographic fieldwork on Rosebud Reservation, Biolsi argues that the court's definitions of legal rights--both constitutional and treaty rights--make solutions to Indian-white problems difficult. Although much of his argument rests on his analysis of legal cases, the central theoretical concern of the book is the discourse rooted in legal texts and how it applies to everyday social practices.
This nuanced and powerful study sheds much-needed light on why there are such difficulties between Native Americans and whites in South Dakota and in the rest of the United States.