The Power of Promises: Rethinking Indian Treaties in the Pacific Northwest (Emil and Kathleen Sick Book Series in Western History and Biography) - Softcover

Harmon, Alexandra; Borrows, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0295988398 ISBN 13: 9780295988399

Publisher: University of Washington Press, 2008

Synopsis

Treaties with Native American groups in the Pacific Northwest have had profound and long-lasting implications for land ownership, resource access, and political rights in both the United States and Canada. In The Power of Promises, a distinguished group of scholars, representing many disciplines, discuss the treaties' legacies. In North America, where treaties have been employed hundreds of times to define relations between indigenous and colonial societies, many such pacts have continuing legal force, and many have been the focus of recent, high-stakes legal contests. The Power of Promises shows that Indian treaties have implications for important aspects of human history and contemporary existence, including struggles for political and cultural power, law's effect on people's self-conceptions, the functions of stories about the past, and the process of defining national and ethnic identities.

About this title

About the Author

Alexandra Harmon is professor of American Indian studies at the University of Washington and author of several books including The Power of Promises: Rethinking Indian Treaties in the Pacific Northwest (UWP, 2008), and Rich Indians: Native People and the Problem of Wealth in American History (UNC Press, 2013), among others.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0295988398
• ISBN 13: 9780295988399
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384