Apache reservation : indigenous peoples and the American state /

Perry has written a sociological survey of America's Apache Indians from their Athabaskan origins in the sub-Artic, through their appearance about 1500 CE on the fringes of the present US Southwest, to the reservation culture of the 20th century, focusing finally on the San Carlos reservation of east-central Arizona. Self-sufficient and adapted to the environment in the precontact period, the Apaches were increasingly victimized by their successive experiences with dominating outsiders--first the Spanish, then westward-moving Americans, and last, modern, federal bureaucrats. Relentlessly pulled into a world economic and political system, the Apache, Perry argues, selected strategies that provided for their survival in the face of rapacious settlers, the appropriation of rich ore deposits they initially controlled, loss of important grazing lands, and the flooding of productive Indian farms for the convenience of non-Indian agribusiness. Rather than "warlike" by nature, the Apache were persistent contestants in a continuing competition for control of economic resources. Perry suggests his study has applicability to analogous circumstances in which indigenous people contest the use of traditional resources by economic competitors. General readers, advanced undergraduates, and above.