Choice 评论
Anderson's excellent and important study uses economic history to take a fresh look at American Indian autonomy. Native Americans, he concludes, are at their freest when they are the most productive. Yet productivity requires unfettered economic choices. As federal paternalism constricts those choices, self-determination is stifled. Anderson demonstrates that precontact native economic activities were very decentralized and dynamic. American Indians adapted to environmental and market changes, even establishing private ownership. Moreover, contact with whites fueled economic development. Introduction of the horse resulted in lower transportation costs and new trade opportunities. Federal policies halted Native American self-determination by intentionally constructing economic dependency via the reservation system, land policy (dictating unproductive parceling of acreage), and the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 (instituting uniformly constitutional governments across tribes). Such a "one size fits all" approach choked the development of unique (and better adapted) local institutions. Indians' hope, Anderson argues, rests in replacing federal control with their own local, tribe-specific institutions. Authentic self-determination must be built from the bottom up, trusting in the freedom of the individual to choose and the capability of the tribe to evolve its own institutions. All levels. W. P. Anderson Jr.; Grove City College