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Post-Colonial Studies of Native America. A Review Essay

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2017

Crisca Bierwert
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Extract

Twenty years ago a work entitled The Nations Within examined the political structures that keep Native polities embedded within the United States, and the legal armature that sovereignty principles might provide for future activism (Deloria and Lytle 1984). The Native nations are still “within,” in the political sense, but they are “out” in public discourses; activism has given sovereignty claims more standing that all but dreamers would have imagined in 1984. During the same period, however, federal Indian policies have alternatively buttressed and undercut the power of tribal leadership, just as they have on other continents where imperial powers have cultivated “Native authorities.” Such destabilizing shifts impel scholars of Native political, economic, and cultural histories to examine less visible violence and inequalities that underlie political institutions, particularly those that remain as evident constructions of power change.

Type
Thomas Biolsi, “Deadliest Enemies”: Law and the Making of Race Relations On and Off Rosebud Reservation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Kathleen S. Fine-Dare, Grave Injustice: The American Indian Repatriation Movement and NAGPRA. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002).
Copyright
© 2004 Society for Comparative Study of Society and History

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References

Bierwert Crisca 1999 Brushed by Cedar, Living by the River: Coast Salish Figures of Power Tucson University of Arizona Press
Buckley Thomas 2002 Standing Ground: Yurok Indian Spirituality, 1850–1990 Berkeley University of California Press
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