Sovereign Schools: How Shoshones and Arapahos Created a High School on the Wind River Reservation by Martha Louise Hipp (review)

Martha Louise Hipp’s Sovereign Schools candidly illustrates, through exhaustive research and oral interviews, the resiliency of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribal Nations. They demonstrated this resiliency despite a chronic deluge of internal and external detrimental forces, beginning with the signing of the Fort Bridger Treaty of 1868 in the Wyoming Territory. Located at the joining of the Great Basin and Northern Plains, Wyoming’s Wind River Reservation, the Wind River Reservation represents a small section of the traditional homeland of the Eastern Shoshone People. After Chief Washaki (Eastern Shoshone) signed the Fort Bridger Treaty, the tribe agreed to reside mainly on the Fort Washaki Agency in perpetuity. By 1878, the Northern Arapaho, began to settle on the Wind River Reservation alongside of the Eastern Shoshone—their traditional enemies—in an unofficial capacity. The temporary residence of the Northern Arapaho at the Fort Washaki Agency became permanent after the conclusion of the 1938 U.S. Supreme Court case United States vs. Shoshone Tribe of Indians. The complex history that exists between these two tribal entities continues to affect intertribal relations and politics at Wind River into the present.

Hipp explores diplomatic relations between the federal government, the Eastern Shoshone, and the Northern Arapaho through the lens of American Indian education. Opening chapters briefly delve into the history of American Indian federal boarding facilities and contract schools; these were initially placed under the jurisdiction of both the Roman Catholic Church and Protestant evangelical reformers in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Subsequent chapters discuss the impact of the “Peace Policy” or “Quaker Policy” (1869; its chief architect was Commissioner of Indian Affairs and traditional Seneca Sachem Ely S. Parker), Progressive Era reforms, the Meriam Report (1928), and the Indian Reorganization Act (1934). They also examine tribal termination and self-determination in reference to post-Civil War Era federal legislation. Additionally, Hipp addresses the impact of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, (1952) and of the Coalition of Indian Controlled School Boards (1971–1981). Further topics include regional segregation, linguistic developments, cultural preservation, traditional spirituality, pervasive conflicts with non-Natives over American Indian-held resources, and chronic pressures emanating from local, state, and federal officials as the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho continue to assert tribal sovereignty in large and small ways.

The centerpieces of the manuscript are chapters dedicated to 1960s and 1970s Wind River Reservation activism and how it pertained to public school sovereignty. Specifically, Hipp connects local efforts to the activities of international organizations, such as those of the American Indian Movement. After enduring decades of fluctuating federal policies linked to the U.S. non-Indian education system, many Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho living on or near the Wind River Reservation looked to individuals such as Russell Means (Ogalala Lakota Sioux) and Leonard Peltier (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe) for guidance at this poignant time in diplomatic relations with state and federal officials.

The greatest strength of Sovereign Schools is the manner in which the author seamlessly intersperses personal accounts and anecdotes from tribal members and former students into the body of the manuscript. Interspersing oral interviews with primary and secondary sources, Hipp clearly comprehends the complexity of ongoing diplomatic relations between the Native and non-Native populations that reside on the Wind River Reservation and in the vicinity of Wyoming’s Fremont and Hot Springs counties.

In closing, I want to applaud Hipp for fully communicating how vibrant and welcoming the Shoshone and Arapaho Peoples can be. When I was living in Oklahoma in the late 1990s while pursuing a PhD in American Indian History at Oklahoma State University, I was good friends with a woman who was Southern Cheyenne, Southern Arapaho, and Otoe-Missouri. We often shared meals, attended pow wows, and saw bands at local venues together. When her Southern Arapaho grandmother passed away in the Spring...