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"'Closing the Gap in Indigenous Economics' By Bruce E. Johansen, The Encyclopedia of Native American Economic History (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1999)"

The Encyclopedia of Native American Economic History (ed. Bruce E. Johansen) sets out to bring greater clarity to and a deeper understanding of Native American history through the application of an economic lens. Although the entries in the encyclopedia are far from exhaustive, the work nonetheless presents a welcome and readable contribution to the otherwise weak corpus of work on the subject.

The reader learns, for example, that the introduction of the horse reduced the size of hunting parties and enabled the average size of the tipi to increase; that the U.S. government established Indian boarding schools to incorporate American Indians into the lower strata of the industrial wage labor force; and that the Nez Perce endured waves of immigration, war and removal to eventually experience an economic rebirth in the last half of the twentieth century. The book contains some excellent summaries on contemporary issues, including the rise of Indian gaming since 1988, the evolution of Indian banking, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Individual Indian Monies accounting mess. A healthy sprinkling of trivia also enlivens the volume, such as how the term "buck" became slang for the U.S. dollar (buckskins were literally used as a unit of monetary exchange) and how the name "Mohawk" came to be (it is adapted from an Algonquian word meaning "cannibal").

Andrew J. Lee (Seneca) is executive director for programs with the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.