Abstract
Ada Deer is most well known as the first woman to lead the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. This achievement was built upon years of social justice work on behalf of her own tribe, the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin, and continual efforts to advance Native voices and fight for tribal rights at local, state, and federal levels. Many readers of Making A Difference: My Fight for Native Rights and Social Justice may be less aware that Deer was among the first American Indians to earn a master's degree in social work. In realizing this educational goal, she would become a model and mentor for other Native women, like me, who sought to use education and strong cultural identity to improve conditions for Native people and communities. Her life story illustrates a sweet spot where tribal values and social work values can unite and ignite a spark that propels an individual to action on behalf of Native people. In Ada Deer, that spark became a flame that has burned brightly for more than 60 years, during which her work has embodied two values shared by many tribes—being of service to one's people and giving back in gratitude for help and support received.
Throughout Making a Difference, Deer contributes greatly to the ongoing conversations about tribal sovereignty and self-determination and paints a picture of the very real impacts that certain federal policies aimed at American Indian tribes made on individuals and in communities. Tribal sovereignty is a concept often bandied about in this era of diversity, equity, and inclusivity initiatives, but what its actual expression looks like can be difficult for some to grasp. Deer's writing instills understanding of the foundations of tribal sovereignty—peoplehood, tribal self-determination, and self-sufficiency—in ways arguably better than legal definitions and policy discussions can accomplish. Deer creates this understanding through powerful snapshots of the spiritual and emotional experience of peoplehood and the deep impacts of living through threats to that peoplehood. By revealing sovereignty's broader dimensions, Making a Difference moves beyond simple memoir and becomes a short, yet powerful treatise on tribal sovereignty.
Making a Difference also presents 1960s–1970s Indian policy through a Native lens, framing the civil rights actions of American Indians as a response to the failure of the U.S. government to uphold its trust responsibility to ensure the survival and welfare of Indian people and tribes. Chapters 3 and 4 of the book powerfully illustrate the nuances of federal Indian policy and what the implementation of these policies looked like through the eyes of the Native individuals, communities, and tribal governments that were the targets of such policies. This characteristic of the book positions it as a useful supplement for courses that teach social work policy or American Indian studies.
Many textbooks discussing the Termination Era of Federal Indian policy provide a legalistic explanation of the policy's aims and provisions but fall short at conveying how the policy impacted the actual lives and psyches of tribal people. In Chapter 3, “Trouble at Home,” Deer describes Menominee tribal members’ spiritual, emotional, and practical experience of tribal termination, including trying to grasp the unfathomable idea of no longer being considered Indians. She presents the hardships of termination in ways that staid policy explanations can never achieve: In less than a decade, we had seen our tribe dissolved and our future as a people destroyed. We had been self-supporting and self-governing. Our forest and mill provided employment, and tribal income funded education, health care, and social services. Now desperate poverty was widespread, forcing many young people to seek employment elsewhere. And the very land on which our former prosperity had rested was being sold out from under us. (pp. 64–65)
As an American Indian social worker, I approached the opportunity to review Ada Deer's memoir, Making a Difference: My Fight for Native Rights and Social Justice, with excitement. Although at times the narrative may seem to ramble as it chronicles the notable politicians, political activists, and business people with whom Ada Deer connected over the course of her career, this book did not disappoint. The power of Making a Difference lies in its ability to provide a history lesson, create an understanding of tribal sovereignty, and analyze federal Indian policy of the 1960s and 1970s, all while providing the reader with a view of an extraordinary American Indian leader who used relationality, positionality, tribal values, and a commitment to service to lift up tribal people collectively. Throughout the pages of Making a Difference, I heard Ada Deer impart an important message for current and future generations of Native people: Always remember who you are and where you are from, and because our tribal nations remain at risk from forces that would seek to eliminate them, act in this world in ways that protect and strengthen your people. Thank you, Ms. Deer, for the paths you cleared for us to continue that work.
