Keeping Promises: What Is Sovereignty and Other Questions About Indian Country

Whether you call them Native Americans, American Indians, Navajo, Cheyenne, or Cherokee, they are Americans right down to the ground. They managed to retain some of the ground that European expansion took from them over the years, and today they assert the sovereignty of their claims and demand what the U. S. government promised them during more than two hundred years of war and treaties.

Keeping Promises, the new book from award-winning publisher Western National Parks Association, describes those pledges and the way the indigenous nations use them to nurture their traditions and independence. Although they are American citizens, they also have sovereignty on their own land, legally defined reservations, that allows them to maintain their own police forces, schools, governments, and, yes, casinos.

Presented in a non-threatening, non-academic way, Keeping Promises describes the complex but important relationship between Indian tribes and the U.S. government.

Betty Reid (Navajo) is a reporter for the Arizona Republic, where she has covered schools and tribes for more than twelve years. Ben Winton (Pascua Yaqui Aztec, Crow) was a newspaper and magazine reporter and editor for twenty-two years before launching his own website development business. They live in Phoenix, Arizona. Gwendolen Cates has been photographing for national and international magazines, as well as for entertainment, publishing, and advertising agencies, for nearly fifteen years. She lives in New York City.