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Vested Interests: Trusteeship and Native Dispossession in the United States
How a system of colonial trusteeship converted Native wealth into settler capital
From the earliest days of its founding, the United States set its sights on Native territory. Amid better-known “Indian wars” the federal government quietly built an empire by treaty, offering payments to Native peoples for their land. Routinely inadequate, these payments were nonetheless pivotal because federal officials chose not to deliver them as a lump sum. Instead, the government kept the bulk of payments owed to Native nations under its own control as a trustee, and made access to future installments contingent on Native compliance. In Vested Interests, Emilie Connolly describes how a system of “fiduciary colonialism” seized a continent from its original inhabitants—and, ironically, furnished Native peoples with financial resources that sustained their nations.
Connolly documents two centuries of dispossession in the guise of fiduciary benevolence. Acting as both dispossessor and trustee, the federal government invested Native wealth in state bonds that financed banks, canals, and other infrastructural projects that enabled the country to expand further westward. Meanwhile, Native peoples protected the money they did receive for future generations, investing it in their own institutions and mounting legal challenges to hold their trustees accountable. Still, federal trusteeship placed tight constraints on Native economies in the aim of containing Native power, forcing nations to endure through sheer resilience and ingenuity. By chronicling the long history of Native land dispossession through financial paternalism, Vested Interests reveals the unequal dividends of colonialism in the United States.
From the earliest days of its founding, the United States set its sights on Native territory. Amid better-known “Indian wars” the federal government quietly built an empire by treaty, offering payments to Native peoples for their land. Routinely inadequate, these payments were nonetheless pivotal because federal officials chose not to deliver them as a lump sum. Instead, the government kept the bulk of payments owed to Native nations under its own control as a trustee, and made access to future installments contingent on Native compliance. In Vested Interests, Emilie Connolly describes how a system of “fiduciary colonialism” seized a continent from its original inhabitants—and, ironically, furnished Native peoples with financial resources that sustained their nations.
Connolly documents two centuries of dispossession in the guise of fiduciary benevolence. Acting as both dispossessor and trustee, the federal government invested Native wealth in state bonds that financed banks, canals, and other infrastructural projects that enabled the country to expand further westward. Meanwhile, Native peoples protected the money they did receive for future generations, investing it in their own institutions and mounting legal challenges to hold their trustees accountable. Still, federal trusteeship placed tight constraints on Native economies in the aim of containing Native power, forcing nations to endure through sheer resilience and ingenuity. By chronicling the long history of Native land dispossession through financial paternalism, Vested Interests reveals the unequal dividends of colonialism in the United States.
- GenresHistory
336 pages, Hardcover
Published November 25, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 22, 2026
A dense but necessary read to understand the financial obligations in the sovereign relationship between the federal government and Native nations. Trusteeship and all its pitfalls are still an active part of federal money, and that relationship and every person is included in that-- Native and non-native alike. When our government acts the way it does, we are the people it does so on behalf of. Understanding its fiduciary relationship and shortcomings should encourage all Americans to do better for Native peoples and try to help create that change within the government. All land is Native land, and pretty much all acquisition was illegal. The federal government needs to be held accountable for what it still owes Native nations, and we the people are those who need to hold it to account.
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September 22, 2026346.73 Con
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews