Synopses & Reviews
Long before lucrative tribal casinos sparked controversy, Native Americans amassed other wealth that provoked intense debate about the desirability, morality, and compatibility of Indian and non-Indian economic practices. Blending social, cultural, and economic history, Alexandra Harmon examines seven such instances of Indian affluence and the dilemmas they presented both for Native Americans and for Euro-Americans--dilemmas rooted in the colonial origins of the modern American economy. Harmon's study not only compels us to look beyond stereotypes of greedy whites and poor Indians, but also convincingly demonstrates that Indians deserve a prominent place in American economic history and in the history of American ideas through the twentieth century.
Review
"Harmon offers an original overview of Indian-white relations in the United States by tracing Euro-American attitudes towards Indian economic activity and Indian wealth from seventeenth-century Virginia to the modern age. An original, wide-ranging, well-written, and well-argued work."--Frederick Hoxie, author of A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the American Indians, 1880-1920
Review
"This bold and provocative book is an outstanding work of scholarship. It reveals the complicated and often paradoxical history of American ideas about the morality of wealth accumulation and Indians' efforts to compete in the capitalist marketplace on the same terms as their non-Indian counterparts. Harmon is a trailblazer in the field of American Indian economic history."--Colleen O'Neill, author of Working the Navajo Way: Labor and Culture in the Twentieth Century
About the Author
Alexandra Harmon is associate professor of American Indian studies at the University of Washington. She is editor of The Power of Promises: Perspectives on Northwest Indian Treaties and author of Indians in the Making: Ethnic Relations and Indian Identities around Puget Sound.