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440 Shorter Book Reviews with some fishing), the Algonquians of the Canadian Shield, hunters (theywere fishers and hunters) and so on. A charitable interpretation of this map would be that it portrays a theoretical potential which was never adjusted for whatthe inhabitants of the area actually did. In summary, this book had the potential to be a first-rate reference work. Although it is useful as a readable overview of native history and as a gazetteer for who lived where and when, it is seriously flawed in its poor use of mapstodepict complex changes over time. Conrad Heidenreich Department of Geography York University, Toronto Charles F. Wilkinson. American Indians, Time, and the Law. New Haven:Yale University Press, 1986. xi + 225 pp. This book marks an important fresh starting point for anyone wanting a briefyet comprehensive overview of modern American Indian law as it exists today.One quickly gets a sense of the relevance of laws regarding Indians to the fabricof American jurisprudence. As Professor Wilkinson observes, "from 1970to 1981 Indian laws constituted one-fourth of the [Supreme] Court's interpretation oflaws enacted during the nation's first century." Wilkinson's opening proposition is that Indian law, history and politicsare better understood in terms of time periods than doctrines. The four penodsare conceived as the pre-Colombian, the phase of grouping upon reservations. assimilation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and, most recently, a renaissance of Indian sovereignty since the Indian ReorganizationAct of 1934. But it is the modern era which really overwhelms the focus of the book, asmuch because of the excitement it generates in the writer as because of the spacehe allots to it. With an expert's license, Wilkinson reaches into the volummou~ morass of obscure modern Indian cases and nominates the case of Williamsv.LN. decided by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1959, as the watershed. Usually, leading cases are identified as such by their frequency of citation andthe respect paid them by subsequent decisions. The author's submission to the contrary aside, the reality is that the Williamscase has largely been overlookedas a precedent. Nevertheless, for all that the selection of Williams is hard to defend upon the traditional criterion, it does serve the author's purpose of markingan important conceptual transition. The court in Williams held that litigationto recover a debt between Indians upon a reservation had to be initiated in the Shorter Book Reviews 441 ApacheCounty Superior Court rather than m the court system of the white man. Byrecognizingthe jurisdiction of the Indian court, the argument is that Williams presagedthe subsequent flurry of Indian civil rights cases of the ensuing quartercenturyto the present. Wilkinson's mastery of the lawyer's sources is undoubted. The cases and statutesare exhaustively footnoted, and a prodigious number of these particular sourceshave been abridged in an incredibly small compass. Unfortunately that sinnalsthe book's weakness as well as its strength. Having begun by heralding a bi~ad analysis of history and politics (as well as of law) ranging the whole spectrumfrom pre-Columbian times to the present, the actual execution is, as the authorsubsequently admits, "an attempt to assess the fndian law cases of the modernera.'' That in itself is a sufficiently formidable task, and one wonders why heraisesthe more daunting challenge. In any event, the potential weakness of the workis that it becomes more a lawyer's tool than a matter of obvious general interest. It is perhaps to those scholars who can appreciate the narrow legal dimensionand then transpose the lessons into their own terms that this book will appeal most. Wilkinson does not make the cross-disciplinary connections obvious. What is most refreshing is the author's optimism. Many modem writers on Indianlaw tend to stress the lack of unified legal doctrine. While Wilkinson recognizes this, he nevertheless bravely strikes out on his own. For him the subjectis not so much inconsistent as unresolved, with America poised on the brinkof a juridicially-engineered Indian renaissance of genuine significance. Not thatthe central dilemma is overlooked: how can the appeal to freedom raised by thepromise oflndian sovereignty possibly be reconciled with America's ideology of melting-pot equality and the fabric of...

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