Serving Their Country: American Indian Politics and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century

by Paul C. Rosier

Overview

Over the twentieth century, American Indians fought for their right to be both American and Indian. In an illuminating book, Paul C. Rosier traces how Indians defined democracy, citizenship, and patriotism in both domestic and international contexts.

Battles over the place of Indians in the fabric of American life took place on reservations, in wartime service, in cold war rhetoric, and in the courtroom. The Society of American Indians, founded in 1911, asserted that America needed Indian cultural and spiritual values. In World War II, Indians fought for their ancestral homelands and for the United States. The domestic struggle of Indian nations to defend their cultures intersected with the international cold war stand against termination—the attempt by the federal government to end the reservation system. Native Americans seized on the ideals of freedom and self-determination to convince the government to preserve reservations as places of cultural strength. Red Power activists in the 1960s and 1970s drew on Third World independence movements to assert an ethnic nationalism that erupted in a series of protests—in Iroquois country, in the Pacific Northwest, during the occupation of Alcatraz Island, and at Wounded Knee.

Believing in an empire of liberty for all, Native Americans pressed the United States to honor its obligations at home and abroad. Like African Americans, twentieth-century Native Americans served as a visible symbol of an America searching for rights and justice. American history is incomplete without their story.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674066236
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	09/03/2012
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.22(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.93(d)

About the Author

Paul C. Rosier is Associate Professor of History, Villanova University.

Table of Contents

• Contents
• List of Abbreviations
• Prologue: An Empire for Liberty
• 1. Westward the Course of Empire
• 2. The Defense of the Reservation
• 3. World War II Battlegrounds
• 4. The Cold War on the Indian Frontier
• 5. Nation Building at Home and Abroad
• 6. The Last Indian War
• Epilogue: Indian Country in the Twenty-first Century
• List of Archival Sources
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Index

What People are Saying About This

A superb, innovative book. The story of Native Americans in the Cold War is without doubt one of the most important in the relationship between race and foreign affairs, and Rosier is the first to tell it in full. Impressively researched and engagingly written, this book fills a major gap in the literature and will have widespread appeal.

Editorial Reviews

In this extensively researched and well-documented study, Rosier examines modern Native American political history within an international context.

Booklist - Deborah Dawson

This pathbreaking book offers a fresh perspective on twentieth-century Indian politics, patriotism, and tribalism by tracking important intersections between domestic and international affairs. The Cold War and global colonization movements emboldened Native Americans to demand their rights. Simultaneously, events required them to defend their homelands from enemies both within and without the country. To be Indian and American poses no contradiction, as Rosier so wisely points out, if the nation lives up to its ideals and its treaty obligations.

Sherry L. Smith

By putting Indian affairs in a broader, international context he does the field a great service.

Journal of American Studies - Joy Porter

A fascinating study documenting how federal American Indian policies intersected with national and international issues...Although other historians have written about specific eras in which this intersection occurred, Rosier's intriguing and sweeping study adds much to the literature.

Journal of American History - Laurence M. Hauptman

Fascinating...This is an important book, certain to generate considerable discussion.

Pacific Historical Review - Brian Hosmer

Serving Their Country presents a compelling argument...Rosier has produced an important book that will provide scholars with much to engage, discuss, and debate.

Daniel M. Cobbn Historical Review

A superb, innovative book. The story of Native Americans in the Cold War is without doubt one of the most important in the relationship between race and foreign affairs, and Rosier is the first to tell it in full. Impressively researched and engagingly written, this book fills a major gap in the literature and will have widespread appeal.

Thomas Borstelmann

Serving Their Country presents a compelling argument...Rosier has produced an important book that will provide scholars with much to engage, discuss, and debate.

American Historical Review - Daniel M. Cobb

By putting Indian affairs in a broader, international context he does the field a great service.
— Joy Porter

Journal of American Studies

A fascinating study documenting how federal American Indian policies intersected with national and international issues...Although other historians have written about specific eras in which this intersection occurred, Rosier's intriguing and sweeping study adds much to the literature.
— Laurence M. Hauptman

Journal of American History

Serving Their Country presents a compelling argument...Rosier has produced an important book that will provide scholars with much to engage, discuss, and debate.
— Daniel M. Cobb

American Historical Review

Fascinating...This is an important book, certain to generate considerable discussion.
— Brian Hosmer

Pacific Historical Review

In this extensively researched and well-documented study, Rosier examines modern Native American political history within an international context.
— Deborah Dawson

Booklist