From Publishers Weekly
Raymond Cross is a Yale-educated attorney and the youngest son of Martin Cross, an American Indian tribal chairman who spent the bulk of his life fighting a losing battle against the construction of a post–WWII dam near the upper Missouri River that would forcibly remove hundreds of families from their ancestral lands. VanDevelder's exhaustively researched book uses the Cross family story—and Raymond Cross's eventual transformation into Coyote Warrior, the term given to a growing group of Ivy League–trained lawyers working on American Indian rights issues—to help trace the century-long struggle of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara tribes to protect their North Dakota homelands. The author, an investigative reporter and documentary filmmaker, provides a glimpse into the vagaries of federal Indian law and its effects that avoids preachiness, preferring to let research and recollections by the Cross family tell the story. "It doesn't take long with Indian law before you realize you're breathing a different kind of air," notes one attorney who oversaw legislation to terminate federal wardship over American Indian tribes. The book is at its most accessible when it chronicles the personal struggles of the Cross family, but its sometimes tedious descent into legal jargon and switchback chronology may put off general readers. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
This enlightening chronicle by investigative reporter VanDevelder takes on the complex issue of Indian law as it's being molded by a new generation of Native American lawyers, called coyote warriors, who are part of the Indigenous Environmental Network. Beginning with three landmark decisions made by Chief Justice John Marshall in the 1820s, Indian tribes were recognized as "domestic dependent sovereign nations." When Martin Cross, the great-grandson of the Mandan chief who befriended Lewis and Clark, brought his passionate yet uneducated protest against the proposed Garrison Dam to the Senate floor in 1945, his argument that the land where three tribes had lived "from time immemorial" would be destroyed was overridden. But then his son, Raymond, a Yale-educated lawyer whose life was shaped by the dam's deleterious effect, took up the fight. Returning to North Dakota as the lawyer for the Three Affiliated Tribes, he successfully argued before the Supreme Court for reparations for those tribes who suffered ill effects caused by the dam's destructive environmental impact so that finally justice was done. Deborah Donovan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Library Journal, 6/15/04
"A gripping and vivid portrayal that is extensively researched and well documented. . . . This fascinating book is highly recommended."
Kirkus Reviews, 6/1/04
"A sturdy companion to Michael Lieder and Jake Page's Wild Justice (1997)--highly recommended."
John Nichols, author of The Milagro Beanfield War
Coyote Warrior is one of the most compassionate, uplifting, and important stories that I have read in a long while."
Rick Bass, author of Colter, and The Nine Mile Wolves...
"Intense, heroic, patriotic, heartbreaking, uplifting, wise and instructive, Coyote Warrior is a major work of American history."
Vine Deloria, Jr., author of Custer Died for Your Sins
"Truly inspirational, this book captures the modern struggle for Indian rights."
Outside Magazine (August 2004)
Gripping... 'A Civil Action' set on the rez - it'll have you cheering for the warrior in the three-piece suit."
Debra Utacia Krol, Native Peoples Magazine
"Compelling, outrageous and triumphant...if you read only one book on Native America this year, read Coyote Warrior."
Coyote Warrior: One Man, Three Tribes, and the Trial That Forged a Nation FROM THE PUBLISHER
"The last battle of the American Indian Wars did not end at a place called Wounded Knee. From White Shield to Washington, D.C., new Indian wars are being fought by Ivy League-trained Indian lawyers called Coyote Warriors - among them a Mandan/Hidatsa attorney named Raymond Cross." "When Congress seized the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara homelands at the end of World War II, tribal chairman Martin Cross, the great-grandson of chiefs who fed and sheltered Lewis and Clark through the bitter cold winter of 1804, waged an epic but losing battle against the federal government. As floodwaters rose behind the massive shoulders of Garrison Dam, Raymond, the youngest of Martin's ten children, was growing up in a shack with dirt floors and no plumbing or electricity, wearing clothes made from flour sacks. By the time he was six, his people were scattered to slums in a dozen distant cities. Raymond ended up on the West Coast. Far from the homeland of their ancestors, he and his siblings would hear that their father had died alone and broken on the windswept prairie of North Dakota." "At Martin's graveside, Raymond discovered the solitary path he was destined to follow as a man. After Stanford and Yale Law, he returned home to resurrect his father's fight against the federal government. His mission would lead him back to the Congress his father battled forty years before and into the hallowed chambers of the U.S. Supreme Court. There, the great-great-grandson of Chief Cherry Necklace would lay the case for the sanctity of the U.S. Constitution, treaty rights, and the legal survival of Indian Country at the feet of the nine black robes of the nation's highest court." Coyote Warrior tells the story of the three tribes that saved the Corps of Discovery from starvation, their century-long battle to forge a new nation, and the extraordinary journey of one man to redeem a father's dream - and the dignity of his people.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Raymond Cross is a Yale-educated attorney and the youngest son of Martin Cross, an American Indian tribal chairman who spent the bulk of his life fighting a losing battle against the construction of a post-WWII dam near the upper Missouri River that would forcibly remove hundreds of families from their ancestral lands. VanDevelder's exhaustively researched book uses the Cross family story-and Raymond Cross's eventual transformation into Coyote Warrior, the term given to a growing group of Ivy League-trained lawyers working on American Indian rights issues-to help trace the century-long struggle of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara tribes to protect their North Dakota homelands. The author, an investigative reporter and documentary filmmaker, provides a glimpse into the vagaries of federal Indian law and its effects that avoids preachiness, preferring to let research and recollections by the Cross family tell the story. "It doesn't take long with Indian law before you realize you're breathing a different kind of air," notes one attorney who oversaw legislation to terminate federal wardship over American Indian tribes. The book is at its most accessible when it chronicles the personal struggles of the Cross family, but its sometimes tedious descent into legal jargon and switchback chronology may put off general readers. Agent, Joseph Brendan Vallely of Flaming Star Literary Enterprises. (Aug.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Coyote warriors are Native American leaders who use science, law, and tribal sovereignty to protect their heritage (including their culture and natural resources) against self-serving tribal authorities and federal "trustee" agencies. One such coyote is Raymond Cross, a member of the Three Affiliated Tribes (Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara) in North Dakota. VanDevelder investigates the modern history of the tribes via the Cross family, starting with Martin, Raymond's father. As tribal chairman in the 1940s and 1950s, Martin played a pivotal role in advocating for the tribes' rights while vehemently opposing the Garrison Dam, whose construction necessitated taking and inundating ancestral land, relocating hundreds of families, and abrogating numerous treaties. Interviews with those who lived through the events plus testimony and minutes from meetings and congressional hearings create a gripping and vivid portrayal that is extensively researched and well documented. Decades later, Raymond argued and won a case in front of the Supreme Court for retaining the tribes' sovereign immunity (the trial is alluded to in the title). This fascinating book is highly recommended for all libraries.-Margaret Atwater-Singer, Univ. of Evansville Libs., IN Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A solid case study in an emerging trend: American Indian lawyers' use of the courts to extract rights and dollars hidden away in long-forgotten treaties. When William Clark saw the fall run of salmon on the Columbia River, writes freelance journalist VanDevelder, he exclaimed that he could cross from bank to bank on their backs without ever touching water. In 1991, only a single salmon made the journey to an Idaho lake; it was "stuffed, shellacked, and mounted on a pine board and hung in the governor's office in the Idaho statehouse in Boise." Its fate aptly describes a subtext of VanDevelder's narrative, for there was a time when Social Darwinists in the American government hoped that the Indians, dispossessed of their land and stripped of their traditions, would simply fade away. In 1945, that thinking seemed a factor in the US Army Corps of Engineers' plan to create a vast diversion dam across the Missouri River in North Dakota, one that would flood lands claimed by the Arikara, Hidatsa, and Mandan peoples, who had helped Lewis and Clark during the winter of 1804-5 and regretted it ever since. The dam was built, despite the protestations of Indian delegations to the US Congress, displacing thousands of Indians-including the family of Raymond Cross, who would grow up to attend Yale Law and who would take a vigorous interest in redressing the wrongs visited on his people. So he has done, battling the likes of Justices Rehnquist and Scalia, whom Cross characterizes as "an ideological tag team and throwback to another century." Despite setbacks, writes VanDevelder, Cross and other Indian attorneys have been hitting hard, reasserting Indian rights and throwing unschooled judges intoconfusion as "Federal courts are now routinely asked to sort through the myriad of conflicting conditions to divine what tribal leaders understood at the time [a given] treaty was made."A sturdy companion to Michael Lieder and Jake Page's Wild Justice (1997)-highly recommended for readers interested in Native American issues. Agent: Joe Vallely/Flaming Star Literary Enterprises
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