From White Shield to Washington DC, new Indian wars are being fought by Ivy League-trained lawyers called "Coyote Warriors"--among them a Mandan/Hidatsa named Raymond Cross. Coyote Warrior tells the epic story of the three tribes that saved Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery from starvation, their century-long battle to forge a new nation, and the extraordinary journey of one man to redeem a father's dream--and the dignity of his people.

 

Cross graduated from law school and, following his father's death, returned home to resurrect his father's fight against the federal government. His mission would lead him to Congress, which his father had battled forty years before, and into the hallowed chambers of the U.S. Supreme Court. There the great-great-grandson of Chief Cherry Necklace would lay at the feet of the nation's highest court the case for the sanctity of the U.S. Constitution, treaty rights, and the legal survival of Indian Country.

Paul VanDevelder has been an investigative reporter, photojournalist, and documentary filmmaker for more than twenty years. His award-winning work has appeared in the New York Times, National Geographic Traveler, Audubon, Esquire, and the Seattle Times.

"Coyote Warrior will open your eyes and heart to the ongoing battle to preserve Native nations, history and cultures."—Debra Krol, Native Peoples

“[VanDevelder] holds a mirror up to postcolonial America itself, showing how we are entwined and indebted to those who have lived here for thousands of years.”—Audubon (Editor’s Choice)

“Gripping—think A Civil Action set on the rez—and it'll have you cheering for the warrior in the three-piece suit.”—Outside

“The astonishing account of one American Indian’s battle against the federal government to save the land his ancestor’s lost.”—Esquire

“Highly recommended.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Our famously immigrant nation has remained largely oblivious to this former life of the North American continent. . . . The reader of Coyote Warrior may see a current running deeper than the treaties [in this book] themselves. The Indian’s history has not only inextricably intertwined them with the natural life of the continent, but it also poses a continuing challenge to what a Bureau of Indian Affairs chairman once described as the American assumption ‘that the value system of the Anglo-Saxon is universal, and that the individual ownership of property is the only natural way for people to live.’”—San Francisco Chronicle