Responsibility for telling that story fell primarily to Indians of the Pacific Northwest. Quinaults were among the first tribes to assert jurisdiction over non-Indians; and their words and actions encouraged the tiny Suquamish Tribe to do the same.
To explain and justify such moves, tribal spokesmen told two different kinds of stories about the past. Among themselves, to media representatives, and to some of the affected non-Indians, they spoke of specific developments that thwarted the purpose of their reservations – cherished places that held their hopes for continuing existence as a people. They cast themselves as modern Indians taking innovative but moderate, practical steps to solve grave problems.
They knew, however, that U.S. judges would ultimately determine whether their solutions were permissible; and for judges, a story of another sort was required. In American legal culture, an account of recent developments, practical dilemmas, and political change in a particular place mattered less than a national history of doctrine – a chronicle of abstract pronouncements over decades on the nature of tribes’ power. That was a story tribal advocates believed they could also tell compellingly. But they were mistaken, ironically, because change and contradictions were as common in legal history as on the reservations.
See more of: AHA Sessions