Three decades ago-years after most tribes had filed land claims-the Zuni initiated legal battles related to aboriginal claims, rights, and use that few experts thought they could win. Yet by 1991 they had achieved three major victories.

In the first case, the Zuni sued the United States seeking payment for aboriginal territorial lands taken without adequate compensation. In the second, also against the United States, the tribe sought compensation for environmental damages to Zuni trust lands caused by the U.S. Government and by private industry where the federal government should have...

Drawing from forty-five years of experience, E. Richard Hart elucidates the use of history as expert testimony in American Indian tribal litigation. Such lawsuits deal with aboriginal territory; hunting, fishing, and plant gathering rights; reservation boundaries; water rights; federal recognition; and other questions that have a historical basis. The methodology necessary to assemble successful expert testimony for tribes is complex and demanding and the legal cases have serious implications for many thousands of people, perhaps for generations.

Hart, a historian who has testified in...