The Struggle for Self-Determination

Winner of the Wisconsin Historical Society Book Award

Drawing on meticulous archival research and a close working relationship with the Menominee Historic Preservation Department, David R. M. Beck picks up where his earlier work, Siege and Survival: History of the Menominee Indians, 1634–1856, ended. The Struggle for Self-Determination begins with the establishment of a small reservation in the Menominee homeland in northeastern Wisconsin at a time when the Menominee economic, political, and social structure came under aggressive assault. For the next hundred years the tribe attempted to regain control of its destiny, enduring successive policy attacks by governmental, religious, and local business sources.

The Menominee’s rich forests became a battleground on which they refused to cede control to the U.S. government. The struggle climaxed in the mid-twentieth century when the federal government terminated its relationship with the tribe. Throughout this time the Menominee fought to maintain their connection to their past and to regain control of their future. The lessons they learned helped them through their greatest modern disaster—termination—and enabled them to reconstruct a government and a reservation as the twentieth century drew to a close. The Struggle for Self-Determination reinterprets that story and includes the viewpoint of the Menominee in the telling of it.

 Praise for The Struggle for Self-Determination

“Beck skillfully synthesizes the downward spiral of the Menonimee economy, but he also admirably documents their successful legal fight to restore their tribal status and maintain their cultural values. Utilizing a vast array of sources, including numerous interviews with Menominees and their tribal records, he has produced the best single book on the subject.”—Choice

“[E]xcellent. This method should be followed by all historians and ethno-historians.”—Beatrice Medicine

“Recommended to anyone interested in the persistence of Native American communities after conquest and their ongoing revitalization in contemporary America.”—Journal of American History

“This is an impressive and fine piece of historical scholarship and no one will ever be able to write another history of the Menominee without studying Beck carefully. His comprehensive chronological narrative of the colonial administrative history of the Menominee reservation—and Indian efforts to shape the same—has set a standard for archival research”—Larry Nesper, American Indian Culture & Research Journal

“An impressive study that, together with [Beck’s] Siege and Survival, presents an unbroken and valuable narrative that relates the consistent efforts made by Menominee men and women to preserve their cultural, political, and economic foundations even as they adapted to the changing world around them.”—H-Net Book Reviews H-AmIndian

“A well-written monograph based on extensive oral interviews and archival research. For specialists of modern Indian history, especially the termination and restoration eras, The Struggle for Self-Determination proves a useful addition to the literature.”—Mark Edwin Miller, Journal of the West

“A launching point for a new generation of studies about Indian tribes in the twentieth century that may delve more deeply into the tribal perspective to illuminate the intricacies of Menominee culture, politics, and society.”—James M. McClurken, Western Historical Quarterly

“This work is so much more than a study of survival; instead, it is a model of how the evolving theoretical use of agency can serve to explain native history, either on tribal, national, or regional levels. What is perhaps most refreshing about this work is that Beck moves beyond the traditional or simple chronology to a substantive thematic analysis of the Menominee experience over the past century and a half. . . . Here is a case study in active agency—a work that successfully moves beyond the study of Indian history as one of victimization and violence.”—Anthony G. Gulig, Michigan Historical Review