We are an Indian Nation: A History of the Hualapai People (review)

In We Are an Indian Nation, Jeffrey P. Shepherd traces the historical development of the Hualapai people from the era of Spanish colonization in the Southwest (1600s) to the early twenty-first century. The original territories of the interrelated Pai peoples were located in present-day eastern Arizona, southern California, and northeastern Baja California. Over the course of four centuries, these Pai bands, including the Hualapai living along the Colorado River and Lake Mead, faced various cycles of invasion, colonization, and dispossession from the imperial powers of Spain, Mexico, and finally the U.S. Shepherd frames his study of the Hualapai using this lens of colonization, which allows him to elucidate the outside forces brought to bear on the Hualapai, the complexity and contradictions of these forces, the responses of the Hualapai, and also how the interplay of these outside forces and community responses shaped Hualapai identity over time.

A poignant example of the author's approach is his opening account of the La Paz Memorial Run, which tribal members undertake each April to commemorate the 1874 forced internment of hundreds of Pais by the U.S. and their eventual escape back to their aboriginal homeland in 1875. This annual event allows the Hualapai to remember one of the most important watersheds in their history. The themes of imprisonment and liberation also serve as larger metaphors for the Hualapais' experience with Anglo-American colonization. Like many Native groups across North America, the Hualapai suffered greatly under European invasion and conquest; however, an ironic outcome of colonization was a simultaneous process of modern nation building. In facing warfare, dispossession, loss of access to natural resources, and cultural assaults, the Hualapai fought back, and over time, thirteen smaller bands coalesced into the modern Hualapai Nation. They created a collective political identity, as well as a layered social and cultural identity both influenced by the larger Anglo-American culture and their aboriginal customs, values, and ethics.

This modest-sized book will be useful for undergraduate and graduate courses, though the reliance on scholarly jargon may prove challenging for undergraduates. Although oral histories are not the main focus of this study, they are nonetheless important primary sources. The author took great pains to collaborate with the Hualapai on this study, seeking the approval and collaboration of the tribe's elected officials and recognized elders. In addition to conducting nine interviews with community members, Shepherd relied on several oral history collections archived with the Hualapai Nation Department of Cultural Resources, the Mohave County Museum of History and Arts, and Prescott College. Shepherd also utilized written interviews from the early- to mid-1900s included in the papers of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Claims Commission.

These last collections of interviews are especially significant. Scholars familiar with the Indian Claims Commission of the mid-1900s will recognize the Hualapais' landmark legal battle, which culminated in The Wallapai Tribe v. The Atchison, Topeka, Santa Fe Railway Company (1941). In this decision, the U.S. Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice William O. Douglas, recognized the Hualapais' right to the portion of their aboriginal homeland included in an 1883 executive order reservation. This decision contributed to the birth of ethnohistory and provided a judicial basis for indigenous land claims in North American and beyond. We Are an Indian Nation traces this landmark case within the context of colonization and especially the long-term struggle of the Hualapai themselves to retain a portion of their land and resources. In the classroom, Shepherd's historical study of Hualapai nation building might be paired with Christian W. McMillen's The Hualapai Land Case and the Making of Ethnohistory reviewed by Alphine Jefferson in The Oral History Review (Winter/Spring 2010, 112-6).

Jeffrey Shepherd, in collaboration with Hualapai Nation, has produced a respectful, illuminating, and engaging study of indigenous perseverance and nation building in the midst of unrelenting colonial pressure. As such, We Are...