Documents of Native American Political Development: 1500s to 1933

This anthology contains a variety of primary and secondary source documents--traditional accounts, tribal constitutions, legal codes, business councils, congressional discourse, BIA agent reports, intertribal compacts--that detail the rich and diverse traditions of indigenous governance in North America prior to the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. Many of the documents, particularly of early tribal constitutions, are virtually unknown, simply inaccessible, or have never been published.

David E. Wilkins holds the E. Claiborne Robins Distinguished Professorship in Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond's Jepson School of Leadership Studies. A member of the Lumbee Nation of North Carolina, he received his doctorate in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His recent book publications include "Indigenous Governance: Clans, Constitutions, and Consent" (Oxford, 2023); "Documents of Native American Political Development: 1933-Present" (Oxford, 2019); "American Indian Politics and the American Political System," 4th ed., co-authored with Heidi Stark (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018); "Dismembered: Native Disenrollment and the Battle for Human Rights," co-authored with Shelly Hulse Wilkins (University of Washington, 2017); and others.