Reviewed by:

• Basket Diplomacy: Leadership, Alliance-Building, and Resilience among the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, 1884–1984 by Denise E. Bates
• Jay Precht

The Coushatta people settled Bayou Blue in southwest Louisiana in 1884. Since then, they have maintained their community and identity, established their self-determination, and become an important economic and political presence in the region. Despite the community’s significance and unique history, with Basket Diplomacy: Leadership, Alliance-Building, and Resilience among the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, 1884–1984, historian Denise E. Bates offers the first book-length study of the tribe since 1973. She tracks the development of the Coushatta community in southwest Louisiana from initial settlement to the tribe’s authorization of a tribal bingo operation in 1984, with a primary focus on the activism of Coushatta leaders. This activism and Coushatta self-determination provide the central themes for Basket Diplomacy.

The story culminates with the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana gaining federal recognition, establishing a reservation, and building government infrastructure led by Ernest Sickey, the community’s first tribal chairman. The second half of the book combines Sickey’s firsthand knowledge gleaned from multiple interviews, other interviews with tribal members, interviews with local non-Coushattas, and previously unused newspaper articles and archival sources to provide the most complete history of the community for the period from the 1950s to the mid-1980s. The first three chapters of the book tie Sickey’s efforts to those of earlier Coushatta leaders, explain how the Coushattas established a new home in southwest Louisiana, and outline their early efforts to create alliances and establish a relationship with the federal government.

David Sickey, Ernest Sickey’s son and the current tribal chairman, provides an epilogue focused on the significance of Bates’s work. He highlights its value for the tribe but also puts it forward as “a model for mutually beneficial and successful collaboration between an academically based scholar and an Indian tribe” (p. 210). Bates’s earlier publications featured Ernest Sickey prominently, and she built relationships with the former tribal chairman and the Coushatta people over an eight-year period. Extensive interviews with Ernest Sickey form the core of Basket Diplomacy, and David Sickey maintains that Bates “was, and still is, the only person whom my father ever allowed to hear, and record, this history” (p. 208).

In the introduction, Bates reveals that she initially planned to focus on Coushatta efforts for self-determination during the 1970s but expanded her scope. Examining Coushatta history from 1884 through the 1960s enables her to place Sickey’s leadership in context and to highlight the various institutions from which Coushatta leaders emerged, and extending the narrative to 1984 allows her to show that nation-building is a process that continued after federal recognition. David Sickey mentions the growth of the tribe since 1984 including the economic success of the Coushatta Casino Resort in the epilogue, but Bates does not grapple with the issues related to gaming or the debates it created in the Coushatta community from 1985 through 2006. By ending her narrative in 1984, Bates leaves the door open for further research on the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana and its efforts to maintain self-determination. [End Page 150]

Overall, Basket Diplomacy contributes significantly to our understanding of Indigenous peoples in the South, Indigenous leadership, and tribal relationships with local, state, and federal institutions. It reminds us that the experiences of Native peoples in the South are not monolithic and that community histories remain essential to understanding the diversity of Native experiences.

审核人：

• 篮筐外交：1884年至1984年，路易斯安那州库沙塔部落的领导力，联盟建设和抵御力，作者丹尼斯·E·贝茨（Denise E. Bates）
• 杰伊·普雷希特（Jay Precht）

库沙塔（Coushatta）人民于1884年在路易斯安那州西南部定居了巴约布鲁（Bayou Blue）。此后，他们保持了社区和身份，建立了自决权，并成为该地区重要的经济和政治存在。尽管社区具有重要的意义和独特的历史，但历史学家丹尼斯·E·贝茨（Denise E. Bates）对路易斯安那州的库沙塔部落（Coushatta Tribe）进行了篮筐外交：领导，联盟建设和抵御能力，1884–1984年，为该部落自1973年以来的第一本书。跟踪路易斯安那西南部Coushatta社区的发展，从最初的定居到1984年部落对部落宾果游戏的批准，主要关注Coushatta领导人的行动主义。这种行动主义和库沙塔的自决为篮筐外交。

故事的高潮是路易斯安那州的库沙塔部落（Coushatta Tribe）获得联邦承认，建立了保留地，并建立了由社区第一位部落主席欧内斯特·西基（Ernest Sickey）领导的政府基础设施。该书的下半部分结合了Sickey从多次采访中获得的第一手知识，对部落成员的其他采访，对当地非Coushattas的采访以及以前未使用过的报纸文章和档案资源，以提供该时期以来该社区最完整的历史。 1950年代至1980年代中期。该书的前三章将Sickey与早期库沙塔领导人的努力联系在一起，解释库沙塔人如何在路易斯安那西南部建立新家，并概述了他们早期建立联盟并与联邦政府建立关系的努力。

欧内斯特·西基（Ernest Sickey）的儿子，现任部落主席戴维·西基（David Sickey）提供了结尾词，重点介绍了贝茨工作的重要性。他强调了它对部落的价值，但也提出了它作为“学术学者和印度部落之间互惠互利和成功合作的典范”（第210页）。贝茨（Bates）较早的出版物以欧内斯特·西基（Ernest Sickey）为特色，她在8年的时间里与前部落主席和库沙塔人建立了联系。篮子外交的核心是对欧内斯特·西基（Ernest Sickey）的广泛采访，而大卫·西基（David Sickey）坚称，贝茨“是而且仍然是我父亲唯一允许听和记录这段历史的人”（第208页）。

贝茨在引言中透露，她最初计划在1970年代专注于库沙塔的自决努力，但后来扩大了范围。通过考察库沙塔从1884年到1960年代的历史，她可以将西基的领导地位置于背景之中，并突出显示库沙塔领导人的各种机构，并将叙述延伸到1984年使她能够表明，建立国家的过程是在联邦承认后继续进行的过程。 。大卫·西基（David Sickey）提到部落自1984年以来的发展，包括在结局中成功打造了库沙塔赌场渡假村，但贝茨（Bates）并未解决与游戏相关的问题，也没有解决其从1985年至2006年在库沙塔社区创造的辩论。她在1984年的叙述，[完第150页]

总体而言，篮子外交对我们对南方土著人民，土著领导以及与地方，州和联邦机构的部落关系的理解做出了重要贡献。它提醒我们，南方原住民的经历并非单一的，社区历史对于理解原住民经历的多样性仍然至关重要。