[In the following excerpt, the critic states that the essays contained in Deloria's American Indian Policy in the Twentieth Century "contain valuable information of interest to scholars and general readers alike."]

American Indian Policy in the Twentieth Century, edited by Vine Deloria, Jr., presents eleven essays that examine several often ignored areas in Indian history. Tom Holm, for example, in "The Crisis in Tribal Government," suggests that Wounded Knee II was not a "typical" inner city riot, but instead was an attempt to reinstate traditional Sioux values in that tribe's complicated political system. In an entirely different vein, Mary Wallace's "The Supreme Court and Indian Water Rights" shows how the Court's recent decisions have moved away from the long-standing Winters doctrine, which implicitly reserved Indian water rights, toward allowing state courts to adjudicate federal reserved water rights. General readers will be most interested in Daniel McCool's "Indian Voting." As McCool points out, the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution extended citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof." But a federal district court ruled in 1871 that this did not apply to Indians! As a result, Indians were effectively prohibited from voting. By 1924, however, a maze of laws granted citizenship to nearly three-fourths of all Indians, and this process was completed in that same year by the Citizenship Act. Nevertheless, many states still refused to recognize Indians as citizens of the states in which they resided, arguing that reservations were not part of the state (Utah did not relent until the 1950s). World War II proved to be the catalyst in the Indians' struggle to vote, since so many Indians served with distinction in the armed forces. Still, the states erected barriers to full citizenship with such devices as gerrymandering, literacy tests, and lack of facilities. Only the various civil rights acts of the 1960s and 1970s finally settled the issue. Since then, despite their small numbers, Indians have had considerable impact on elections in western states, especially in close races. As McCool notes, the Indian vote has been decisive in five recent Senate races, but it is not always an easily predictable vote. In Arizona, for example, the Papago are strongly Democratic, the Hopi Republican, and the Navajo have changed from Republican to Democratic.

Although many of the essays are seriously marred by a deadening abundance of jargon, all contain valuable information of interest to scholars and general readers alike.