Each Monday, Buffalo Post – along with numerous other websites and newspapers – features former Seattle Post-Intelligencer Editorial Page editor Mark Trahant’s columns on Indian Country and health care.

As if that isn’t enough to keep Trahant busy, he’s also been writing a book: “The Last Great Battle of the Indian Wars: Henry M. Jackson, Forrest J. Gerard and the campaign for the self-determination of America’s Indian tribes.”

Amazon describes it thusly, here:

It’s a preposterous title: “The Last Great Battle of the Indian Wars.” How can that be? Well, there were two great battles in our era: The defeat of termination and the campaign for self-determination. First, a terrible, disastrous policy had to be rejected – and then it had to be replaced by a new progressive policy course for American Indians and Alaska Natives. This is the context for this story about Henry “Scoop” Jackson and Forrest Gerard. Team Jackson and Gerard so changed the landscape of Indian Affairs that virtually every member of the body politic today agrees with the premise that American Indians and Alaska Natives have the right to govern themselves.

Self-determination is a topic that’s been much in the news the past week, what with the Iroquois Nationals’ ultimately unsuccessful fight to travel overseas to the World Lacrosse Tournaments on their Haudenosaunee Confederacy passports.

The incident captured the attention of a lot of people, some of whom will no doubt want to learn more on the subject. Trahant’s book is wonderfully timed.

The book has its own Facebook page, where you’ll find this review by Pete Jackson that includes the following:

[Trahant] leavens analysis of his hero and friend, Forrest Gerard, with enough anecdotes of political horse trading to avoid hagiography. This is a story about failure, hubris, political creativity, and trying, whether sincerely or not, to make things right.

The final, broader takeaway to Trahant’s book: Politics (but no one tell academe this) is not a science. It’s what makes Trahant’s story as rich as human nature is inscrutable.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Forrest Gerard, Gwen Florio, Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Henry Jackson, Iroquois Nationals, Lacrosse, Mark Trahant, Native American news, Scoop Jackson, self-determination, The Last Great Battle of the Indian Wars, tribal sovereignty, World Lacrosse Tournament