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Tells the story of a tribe whose members waged a painful and sometimes bitter twenty-year struggle among themselves about whether to give up their status as a sovereign nation

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

1. "We want to be Indians forever."

2. "It is like giving your eagle feather away."

3. "Soon buried in a junk pile of Cadillacs."

4. "What is their future?"

5. "Come back from your pilgrimage to nowhere."

6. "Not another inch, not another drop."

Conclusion: "We kept getting a little bit smarter."

Appendix: Major Legislation Affecting the Colville Confederated Tribes

Notes

References

Index

About the Author

Laurie Arnold is the director of Native American Initiatives at the University of Notre Dame. She is an enrolled member of the Lakes Band of Colville Confederated Tribes.

Reviews

"Bartering with the Bones of Their Dead is a significant contribution to the field of 20th-century American Indian policy studies. Laurie Arnold's historical case study of her own tribal community's fractured reaction to federal termination efforts provides a nuanced view of American Indian responses to the difficult issues they faced. Arnold does a masterful job piecing together a complex and painful era of Colville history. In doing so, she broadens our understandings of intra-tribal decision making and local impacts of federal initiatives." David R. M. Beck, author of Seeking Recognition: The Termination and Restoration of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians, 1855-1984