Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2023 -

Ed. Note: Choice considers racial justice a cornerstone of its mandate to support academic study. Accordingly, Choice is highlighting select racial justice titles through the creation of long-form reviews such as the one featured here. Though the scope of these reviews will be broader than those applied to our standard 190-word reviews, many of the guidelines regarding what to focus on will remain the same, with additional consideration for how the text under review sheds light on racist systems and racial inequities or proposes means of dismantling them. Our intent is to feature important works on racial justice that will be of use to undergraduates and faculty researching racism and racial inequalities from new perspectives.

Defense of Sovereignty tells a story of resilience that will resonant with many audiences and should be widely read. While the first chapters create a foundation by telling the political and legal history of the Oneida Nation and the relocation of Oneida Indians from New York to Wisconsin, the story then focuses on the challenges to the Nation's sovereignty. Five municipal governments sit within the boundaries of the reservation, and the village of Hobart has spent decades trying to tax and regulate the conduct of the Nation despite clear legal precedent preserving its sovereignty. Webster (Univ. of Minnesota, Duluth), a former attorney for the Nation, uses legal records, personal narrative, journalistic reporting, and individual interviews to document the challenges posed by Hobart and the Nation's responses. The text becomes a blueprint for how Native advocates can learn from those who have fought challenges to preserve tribal sovereignty, and also shows emphatically that tribes remain under threat by non-Indian communities that deny the sovereign powers of the tribal government. The book is a tool to communicate knowledge and experience to the next generation of Indigenous leaders and tribal advocates, and belongs in every collection.Summing Up: Essential. Undergraduates through faculty; professionals; general readers.