UCLA School of Law

Emilie Connolly’s Vested Interests: Trusteeship and Native Dispossession in the United States is a rare book, one that has the potential to lift the curtain on well-tread historical accounts and cast them in an altogether new light. The trust responsibility that defines Native-federal relations in the American legal system sits at the heart of Connolly’s work. Connolly’s meticulously documented archival and historical research on the financial relationship between the United States and Indian tribes reveals that much of the previous scholarship focused on the trust responsibility has been missing a crucial piece.