The Power of the Land - Identity, Ethnicity, and Class Among the Oglala Lakota (Hardcover)

This book is the first in-depth look at the past 120 years of struggle over the Oglala Lakota land base on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. An unholy alliance between the federal government and regional economic interests has led to progressive disenfranchisement of the majority of the Oglala people, and to the development of an ethnically distinct class of Oglala who control the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation land base. The small group of so-called "mixed-blood" Oglala has come to control the grazing land on the reservation, and to exercise a disproportionate control of the Oglala Sioux Tribal Government. Conflicts growing out of that situation are central to understanding of the reservation situation.