Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties is an eminently readable introduction to the various legal doctrines marshaled against Indian nations by non-Indian thinkers, legislators, and jurists in the several hundred years since first contact. Deloria wrote the book in the early 1970s, at the height of AIM's popularity with the mainstream press, and he situates his legal analysis within the context of the movement. In that sense the book is also a primary source, capturing the intellectual debates regarding American Indian sovereignty in the early 1970s, as well as proposing potential remedies to the ills Deloria
