MISSION: Southwest Research and Information Center is a multi-cultural organization working to promote the health of people and communities, protect natural resources, ensure citizen participation, and secure environmental and social justice now and for future generations

BOOK REVIEW

Fire on the Plateau
Conflict and Endurance in the American Southwest
By Charles Wilkinson

Covelo, Calif.: Island Press, 1999
402 pp., $24.95, cloth
ISBN: 1-55963-647-5

A main task of our humanity is to learn the lessons of conquest -- whether the conquests involve people, such as Nicaagat and the Ute, places, such as Glen Canyon, or life-supporting natural phenomena, such as crypto biotic soil. We have much more to learn, but there is still time for the Colorado Plateau because it is a broad and distant land. Will we learn what we must, and learn it fast enough, so that the land can hold both its physical health, which is its life, and its remoteness, which is the core of its bold, vivid personality?

I have learned for sure, during my thirty-five years in the law, that the answers, if they come, will be due less to laws than to personal responsibility. And laws are easy compared to personal responsibility. -- Fire on the Plateau

Going from East to West along the central axis of the continental United States, the landscape gradually changes character, and the changes can be felt deep down inside as you watch the land roll past. Around central Colorado, a huge land mass begins to rise from the plains, and with it comes a sense of awe at the vastness of land and sky. This is the Colorado plateau, a beautiful, and to many, a mystical feature of the nation's topography. Arid and rugged, it is at the same time desolate and sublime, and it occupies a special place in the hearts of many, including Charles Wilkinson -- attorney, law professor, and author of the new book, Fire on the Plateau: Conflict and Endurance in the American Southwest.

I first became familiar with Charles Wilkinson's work in law school, where my class in Indian law used his textbook. During that semester I also read several of his law review articles. I liked his writing even before I picked up Fire on the Plateau, though I was not prepared for the striking reading to come. In Fire on the Plateau, Wilkinson manages to deftly weave numerous and complex narrative threads into a readable, coherent whole. The book is at once a history of the land and people of the American Southwest, a treatise on natural history, an environmental manifesto, and a personal journal, all intimately related.

The most pervasive theme, and the book's foundation, is the historical narrative concerning the plateau's land and people. Wilkinson tells several stories related to this theme, from his early experience as a lawyer for the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) litigating civil rights cases, to the tale of deceit surrounding the early legal representation of the Hopi Tribe in Arizona.

One of the most interesting stories is the narrative involving Wilkinson's early career with NARF. Wilkinson joined NARF shortly after it was founded in the early 1970s and worked, in cooperation with DNA People's Legal Services, to enforce the civil rights of Navajo children on the Navajo reservation, vis a vis the McKinley County school district in New Mexico and the San Juan County school district in Utah. At the time, Navajo children were bused sometimes upwards of 150 miles one way to school. And inevitably, the resources -- both physical and intellectual -- available to the Navajo kids were substantially inferior to those of their white counterparts. Wilkinson is adept at describing the zeitgeist of the period -- long-haired young lawyers fighting the good fight along with a people who had suffered nearly every conceivable form of oppression since their first contact with Europeans. Fortunately, this particular story ended happily with NARF, DNA, and their clients winning their case.

This narrative is particularly interesting because of the comparisons that can be drawn between generations. As an attorney working for a post-"Republican revolution" DNA People's Legal Services, I found myself envious of the latitude extended to legal services lawyers in the 1970s, before we were prohibited from representing entire classes of people and had nearly no money to do our jobs. Also, it is depressing to note that in many ways, things have not changed all that much. For example, the McKinley County school district still does not provide the same educational opportunities to minorities, especially Navajos as it does to white children, despite numerous lawsuits against it and persistent pressure from the federal government.

Another thread in the book involves how the Southwest's rapid industrialization, which Wilkinson terms "the Big Build Up," has affected native peoples in the area. In particular, Wilkinson focuses on the history of coal mining on the Plateau. Wilkinson traces the genesis of industrial development in general and coal mining for industrial purposes, in particular, in the Southwest. Industrialization in the Southwest really began in earnest with the concerted effort of Phoenix's chamber of commerce to make that city the jewel of the West. Of course, in order to build a major city in an arid landscape, there must be both water and electric power readily available. While the water need was met through a series of vast and expensive reclamation projects, the electric power was assured by various coal mining schemes.

And Wilkinson is at his best when describing this history of the coal mining on northeastern Arizona's Black Mesa, a sordid tale that is really an allegory for industrialization in the West. The story, which begins in the 1950s, is about power, money and one particularly sleazy, despicable, and powerful Utah lawyer named John Boyden who persuaded, cajoled, and to some extent, coerced the Hopi Tribe to retain him as its tribal counsel. Boyden deceived the Tribe from the very beginning. In fact, his very employment as tribal counsel was essentially foisted on the tribe by the Secretary of the Interior, who is responsible for acting as trustee with respect to Indian tribes and their affairs.

One of Boyden's first acts as the Hopis' lawyer was to negotiate a mineral lease with Peabody Coal to mine Black Mesa, rich in the high grade coal that would eventually be used to light Phoenix. Despite his professional obligation to represent Hopi interests to the best of his ability, the terms Boyden agreed to on behalf of the Tribe were miserable. The royalties that went to the Hopi from the mine were far less than royalties given to other governments for the right to mine their coal. Boyden also negotiated an agreement that allowed Peabody Coal to purchase water rights from the Hopi at far below market value. Boyden's motive has long been a mystery, but Wilkinson's research revealed that Boyden had been representing Peabody Coal the entire time he was counsel to the Hopi Tribe -- a staggering violation of ethics and egregious breach of the sacred relationship between a lawyer and client.

The relationship between John Boyden and his Hopi clients in some way mirrors the relationship between Americans of European descent and Native Americans in general, both historically and in contemporary society. This observation is the seed of my only real criticism of Wilkinson's book -- that not much contemporary perspective is provided. Beyond mentioning that the Hopi Tribe has new lawyers and that the memory of John Boyden is widely scorned, Wilkinson doesn't describe the present political and natural landscape of the Plateau. He might have, for instance, noted that coal companies are still running roughshod over Indian communities. The Navajo Nation, in fact, has recently filed suit against Peabody Coal and the United States government, alleging that for the last eight years, the Tribe has not been receiving the mineral royalties due it because Peabody and the Feds conspired to conceal the real value of the coal that Peabody has been extracting from tribal lands. Perhaps Wilkinson assumes that it is common knowledge that Native Americans, even the most powerful ones, receive disparate treatment in this society. But it would have been nice to see specific examples.

This one criticism notwithstanding, Fire on the Plateau provides an excellent, penetrating look at the people and land of the Colorado Plateau. It should be on the bookshelf of anyone who cares about the region.

— Eric Jantz

Available from:
Island Press
Box 7
Covelo, CA 95428

Eric Jantz, a former Workbook intern, is an attorney with DNA People's Legal Services, Inc., in Crownpoint, New Mexico.

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