Chapter 15 places Ilf and Petrov’s reaction to American Indians in the context of Soviet nationalities policy. We can see in Ilf and Petrov’s insistence that the American government made “intentional” mistakes in its treatment of Native American peoples yet another example of their tendency to apply Soviet categories to American realities. Doing so, they provided oversimplified depictions of both American Indian policy and Soviet nationalities policy. The shortcomings of their analyses notwithstanding, reconstructing Ilf and Petrov’s encounters and observations in the desert Southwest opens a revealing perspective on the role of racialized difference in Soviet and American understandings of ethnic minorities. Behind this shared sensibility lay a long history of Russian–American anthropological exchanges that was coming to an end as Ilf and Petrov crossed the United States.

The modern Navajo Nation government was founded in large part so that oil leases on the reservation could be approved. But as Chapter 3 shows, the Navajo Nation government did not act as mere rubber stamp for non-Indian interests. Though it did permit oil leasing, the tribe went on to reject the signature piece of New Deal policy directed at Indians, the Indian Reorganization Act. After presenting this foundational period of the Navajo Nation government, the chapter then presents one of the most tragic events in the collective memory of the Navajo people, federally-imposed livestock reduction, which continues to shape tribal land use patterns as well as federal-tribal relations.