Reservation Politics: Historical Trauma, Economic Development, and Intratribal Conflict by Raymond I. Orr (review)

THE BOOK OPENS BY QUESTIONING the Pine Ridge Lakota's unwillingness to accept $1.2 billion as reparations for the theft of their ancestral lands. Given that the 2012 median income on the reservation "hovered near $8,000" amid an unemployment rate of 80 percent, the author suggests that their refusal is a "political puzzle" that "makes no rational sense if rationality is construed economically" (4–5). "The money from the settlement would seem to increase Lakota stability and prosperity and distance the people from the conditions that historical trauma helped induce. Children could go to more generously funded clinics, elders would have more to eat, adults would have greater access to employment and social services, young adults would have further funding for education, and cultural centers could rely on greater resources for community programs. But this logic excludes the charisma that pain and trauma might have over a polity and its constituency" (14). The last sentence of this quote captures the central claim of the book. "Melancholia," in the Freudian sense, may be a politically unpalatable explanation for Native peoples' refusal to embrace the ethos of modern capitalism, but Native studies scholars, the author argues, do a disservice by failing to explore it. Refusing a much-needed infusion of capital because it would dishonor the struggles of ancestors and not accepting a loan for a new grocery store on the reservation because the terms do not adequately respect the sovereignty of the receiving tribe are seen by the author as expressions of psychological malady—of melancholia.

The book looks at three tribal communities (the Pine Ridge Lakota, the Potawatomi, and the Isleta Pueblo), focusing on their different profiles of intratribal political conflict. These ethnographic narratives describe the levels and kinds of tension between advocates of community rooted in tradition and those embracing the pursuit of individual economic success in modern market institutions. The author argues that more and less experience with historical trauma, as juxtaposed in these three communities, has produced or impeded the development of melancholia. The development of intergenerational melancholia is said to create tribal members who are unable to grieve in a healthy way. They become, the author says, "unwilling to accept or let go of the past in order to gain support for the future" (175). Instead, they "refuse to find closure and therefore continue at least some of the trauma of colonization"—an example of Freud's "repetition compulsion" (185).

The psychoanalysis the author offers can be useful. My test for the value of Native studies scholarship is that it must aid Native academics and leaders as we think about how best to help our own communities. Appearing near my retirement and move home, the book has pushed me to review Freud's writings on melancholia. There are deep intergenerational wounds in our communities, and the book may provoke fresh approaches to healing.

The biggest problem with the book is that it reads too much like the anthropology of old. The analysis assumes and fails to critically interrogate the privilege and power of social science. The author seems to assume that Native studies will become one more academic pursuit of scientific truth and that our goal is to make "conceptual headway with other disciplines" (200). The long history of anthropological terror visited upon Native peoples by scholars who refused to think reflexively about their own epistemological assumptions and desires seems to have made no impact on the conceptualization of the author's research.

Ultimately, this unacknowledged epistemological privilege becomes a license to pathologize Natives who refuse to accept money for stolen lands or sacrifice community-producing culture and tradition at the altar of self- interested money making. When the Lakota whose remarks are recorded in the text say that honor, dignity, and the lessons of their ancestors are more important than money, I believe them. And I don't see why we need social science to produce a different explanation.

My own community (the Klamath...