In Waging Sovereignty: Native Americans and the Transformation of Work in the Twentieth Century, Colleen O’Neill historicizes the process by which Native Americans made wage labor and the management of tribal business into a “sovereignty right” (p. 17). O’Neill’s account, which spans the twentieth-century United States, marks a crucial intervention in the study of Native labor by specifying how and why struggles over employment in Indian country differed from those beyond it. Rather than turning to unions, as most non-Native workers did, Native people demanded that the federal government protect their economic security, drawing on the longstanding nation-to-nation relationship that has structured US Indian policy. At the same time, tribal governments have insisted on their ability to manage labor relations within tribal businesses and hiring practices on tribal land, expanding the substantive meaning of sovereignty in the process.

The book’s breadth allows O’Neill to show how Native people engaged with issues that have long been central to labor history, including urbanization, vocational training, unionization, and discriminatory hiring practices. Such an approach is necessary because, despite a growing body of scholarship that examines Native people as workers, Native Americans remain on the outskirts of economic and labor history. The book’s five chapters are organized thematically while proceeding chronologically. Chapter One treats residential boarding schools as “labor contractors” that prepared students to be members of a racialized working class, whereas Chapter Two provides an engaging account of the federal government’s efforts to manage Native labor during the Great Depression through the Civilian Conservation Corps Indian Division (p. 19). Chapter Three analyzes the policy of urban relocation as an economic strategy, offering a novel reframing of a well-studied program.

The most significant contributions of Waging Sovereignty are its fourth and fifth chapters, which focus on the development of tribal employment rights activism and the management of non-Native labor in the gaming industry, respectively. Chapter Four outlines how Native people used the principle of Indian preference in hiring, a practice that dates to 1832, to expand tribal members’ employment opportunities at businesses operating on reservation land. O’Neill offers one of the first historical accounts of the Council for Tribal Employment Rights, which has organized these efforts across more than 300 tribes and Alaska Native villages since 1977. Chapter Five turns to non-Native laborers who work for tribal businesses. As O’Neill argues, for a small number of Native nations operating highly profitable gaming operations, labor has become a matter of managing non-Native workers. These nations have largely rejected the National Labor Relations Board’s interventions into employment issues at tribal businesses, framing the regulation of labor relations as a matter of tribal sovereignty. Historical stereotypes have shaped this modern conflict, including, in the words of Viejas Band of the Kumeyaay Indians Chair Anthony Pico, the notion that “Indians can’t really do anything as well as Anglos” (p. 119). O’Neill demonstrates, however, that possibilities remain for tribal nations to enact their own labor laws protecting both Native and non-Native workers.

Like many historians of Native America, O’Neill relies on federal records, but she is mindful to spotlight Native voices whenever possible. Individual case studies, for instance, illustrate how Native people shaped the implementation of federal policy. This includes the campaign of one Blackfeet activist, Mary B. Salois, to ensure that work relief programs were extended to the women of her reservation. O’Neill also utilizes oral histories conducted with the actors at the heart of her narrative, including Native labor activists, non-Native union members, and attorneys working with the Council for Tribal Employment Rights. These interviews are part of what makes Chapter Four and Chapter Five the most exciting, and they immerse readers in a heretofore understudied chapter of Native American history.

Waging Sovereignty is engagingly written and tightly composed. It should serve as essential reading for historians of business and labor for its articulation of how Indian policy has shaped issues of work and enterprise in Indian country. O’Neill might have engaged more explicitly with scholars in those fields to make her interventions clearer to readers beyond the scope of Native American history, but this is a minor critique for a book that makes clear that you can’t tell labor history without American Indians (Why You Can’t Teach United States History without American Indians, 2015). Waging Sovereignty would also make an excellent choice for undergraduate and graduate classrooms alike. The book promises to challenge most students’ preexisting notions about Native Americans in the twentieth century by highlighting their centrality to labor movements, economic development, and urban life.