- ISBN13: 9780295989358
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
In his memoir, Alvin Ziontz reflects on his more than thirty years representing Indian tribes, from a time when Indian law was little known through landmark battles that upheld tribal sovereignty. He discusses the growth and maturation of tribal government and the underlying tensions between Indian society and the non-Indian world. A Lawyer in Indian Country presents vignettes of reservation life and recounts some of the memorable legal cases that illustrate the challenges faced by individual Indians and tribes. As the senior attorney arguing U.S. v. Washington, Ziontz was a party to the historic 1974 Boldt decision that affirmed the Pacific Northwest tribes’ treaty fishing rights, with ramifications for triba… More >>
A Lawyer in Indian Country: A Memoir
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4 Comments
This is a fascinating and important book. During the past 40 years, more lawsuits seeking to enforce the rights of Indian tribes were filed than in the previous 200 years, and Al Ziontz was at the forefront of that effort. It’s great to have access to his personal account, which explains many of the strategies, trials, and tribulations of those who began the modern era of defending tribal rights. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, both the personal insights and the overall content.
This memoir is a real knock-out. Ziontz’s career as a lawyer for Indian nations was improbable at the outset but both principled and successful. Ziontz writes from the vantage of a long lifetime, beginning with early life in Chicago, law school at the University of Chicago, and a law practice and life in Seattle. Ziontz writes engagingly, with superior insight into himself, his colleagues and clients, and broader cultural, political and philosophical issues. And he has a sense of humor! I really recommend it, a very engrossing read.
If you think “A Lawyer In Indian Country” A Memoir written by Alvin J. Ziontz, will join those not-read books on your bedside table, think again. You will become immersed in Al’s dual stories; that of his own development as a tribal lawyer and those of the legal battles he and his firm fought to preserve not only tribal treaty rights but the very existence of these peoples. The page-turning stories can take you from the banks of the Columbia River to state courts and the Supreme Court.
Because the book is based on research and recollection, many readers from the Northwest will recognize names and incidents that were sometimes reported in the news at the time.
I have not yet put this well-written book down for the last time. It provides a great pattern for anyone wishing to write a memoir, which in my view is where one finds “real” history. The “taste in my mouth” that remains from having read this book is a great respect for those who seek to mesh compassion and the “truth of others” within the boundaries of what we call law. This was the lifetime effort of Al Ziontz. It couldn’t have been easy. However, Al’s exuberance for his life, that included his love of learning and his family, also makes the taste sweet.
A Lawyer in Indian Country, the memoirs of Alvin Ziontz, reads like a storyboard for a great documentary film and provides the ordinary reader, not knowledgeable about the laws which governed water and hunting and fishing rights as they concerned the native American peoples, a true insight into who, both in and our of the state and federal governments, fought for, and/or against, the rights of the sovereign Indian nations. There are heroes and villains aplenty and the author makes it very clear who, in those companies and governments concerned, play these roles for greed and power and who, in those same agencies, represent this country, The United States of America, as a bulwark of fairness and ethical treatment before the law.
A reading of this book makes you more greatly aware of the continuing legal actions which involve the rights of sovereign Indian Peoples whose lands and tribal rights were often abused in the past history of the USA and which are still involved in legal actions to this date where water, fishing and hunting rights are contested by private companies and/or the states.
Personal integrity and a sense of what was an ethical position were the professional benchmarks in the career of Alvin zionty as the lawyer for the American Indian tribes that he and his assocaites represented in Civil actions for the past forty some years.
I sincerely recommend this book to any reader that seeks to understand why and how ethical positions can lead the way to victory in legal battles.