Speaking of Indigenous Politics: Conversations with Activists, Scholars, and Tribal Leaders

400 Pages·2018·2.093 MB·English

by  J. Kēhaulani Kauanui (ed.)

S P E A K I N G O F
I N D I G E N O U S
P O L I T I C S
CONVERSATIONS WITH ACTIVISTS,
SCHOLARS, AND TRIBAL LEADERS
¯
J. KEHAULANI KAUANUI, EDITOR
FOREWORD BY ROBERT WARRIOR
Speaking of Indigenous Politics
INDIGENOUS AMERICAS
Robert Warrior, Series Editor
Chadwick Allen, Trans- Indigenous: Methodologies for Global Native Literary
Studies
Raymond D. Austin, Navajo Courts and Navajo Common Law: A Tradition of
Tribal Self- Governance
Lisa Brooks, The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast
Kevin Bruyneel, The Third Space of Sovereignty: The Postcolonial Politics of
U.S.– Indigenous Relations
Glen Sean Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of
Recognition
James H. Cox, The Red Land to the South: American Indian Writers and
Indigenous Mexico
Brendan Hokowhitu and Vijay Devadas, The Fourth Eye: Māori Media in
Aotearoa New Zealand
Daniel Heath Justice, Our Fire Survives the Storm: A Cherokee Literary History
J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Speaking of Indigenous Politics: Conversations with
Activists, Scholars, and Tribal Leaders
Thomas King, The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative
Scott Richard Lyons, X- Marks: Native Signatures of Assent
Aileen Moreton- Robinson, The White Possessive: Property, Power, and
Indigenous Sovereignty
Jean M. O’Brien, Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians out of Existence in
New England
Shiri Pasternak, Grounded Authority: The Algonquins of Barriere Lake against
the State
Steven Salaita, Inter/Nationalism: Decolonizing Native America and Palestine
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom
through Radical Resistance
Paul Chaat Smith, Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong
Lisa Tatonetti, The Queerness of Native American Literature
Gerald Vizenor, Bear Island: The War at Sugar Point
Robert Warrior, The People and the Word: Reading Native Nonfiction
Robert A. Williams Jr., Like a Loaded Weapon: The Rehnquist Court, Indian
Rights, and the Legal History of Racism in America
SPEAKING OF
INDIGENOUS POLITICS
CONVERSATIONS WITH ACTIVISTS,
SCHOLARS, AND TRIBAL LEADERS
J. Kēhaulani Kauanui
Foreword by Robert Warrior
INDIGENOUS AMERICAS
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis | London
The interview with Jean M. O’Brien was previously published as “Settler Logics and Writ-
ing Indians Out of Existence: A Conversation between J. Kēhaulani Kauanui and Jean M.
O’Brien,” special issue on settler colonialism for Politica & Società, Michele Spanò, guest ed-
itor (June 2012): 259–7 8. The interview with Patrick Wolfe was previously published as “Set-
tler Colonialism Then and Now: A Conversation between J. Kēhaulani Kauanui and Patrick
Wolfe,” special issue on settler colonialism for Politica & Società, Michele Spanò, guest editor
(June 2012): 235– 58. Reprinted with permission.
Copyright 2018 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval sys-
tem, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
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Minneapolis, MN 55401- 2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
ISBN 978-1-5179-0477-7 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-5179-0478-4 (pb)
A Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and employer.
22 21 20 19 18 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In memory of Gale Courey Toensing (1946–2018), a Connecticut-based journalist
of Palestinian and Lebanese descent who was an outstanding staff reporter for
Indian Country Today. Her friendship and significant work covering Indigenous
issues in Native North America were instructive and continue to inspire me.

CONTENTS
Foreword || ix
Robert Warrior
Introduction: Indigenous Politics from
Native New England and Beyond || xiii
Jessie Little Doe Baird on Reviving the Wampanoag Language || 1
Omar Barghouti on the Ethics of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions || 14
Lisa Brooks on the Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast || 21
Kathleen A. Brown- Pérez on Tribal Legitimacy in the Face of Termination || 35
Margaret Bruchac on Erasure and the Unintended Consequences
of Repatriation Legislation || 51
Jessica Cattelino on Indian Gaming, Renewed Self- Governance,
and Economic Strength || 65
David Cornsilk on Freedmen Citizenship Rights at Cherokee || 78
Sarah Deer on Native Women and Sexual Violence || 87
Philip J. Deloria on Genealogies of Activism and Scholarship || 108
Tonya Gonnella Frichner on Developing the United Nations Declaration
on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples || 123
Hone Harawira on Māori Activism and Sovereignty || 132
Suzan Shown Harjo on the Twentieth Anniversary of the Native American Graves
Protection and Repatriation Act || 146
Winona LaDuke on Environmental Activism || 157
Maria LaHood and Rashid Khalidi on Zionist Excavations at the
Mamilla Cemetery in Jerusalem || 171
James Luna on the (Performance) Art of Irony || 185
Chief Mutáwi Mutáhash (Many Hearts) Lynn Malerba on Mohegan Tribal Resilience
and Leadership || 198
Aileen Moreton- Robinson on Whiteness and Indigeneity in Australia || 214
Steven Newcomb on Decoding the Christian Doctrine of Discovery || 225
Jean M. O’Brien on Tracing the Origins of the Persistent Myth of
the “Vanishing Indian” || 239
Jonathan Kamakawiwo‘ole Osorio on a Hawaiian Land Case before the
U.S. Supreme Court || 255
Steven Salaita on Colonization and Ethnic Cleansing in North America
and Palestine || 262
Paul Chaat Smith on the Politics of Representation || 268
Circe Sturm on Cherokee Identity Politics and the Phenomenon of
Racial Shifting || 281
Margo Tamez on Indigenous Resistance to the U.S.–Mexico
Border Wall || 293
Chief Richard Velky on the Schaghticoke Struggle for
Federal Recognition || 312
Robert Warrior on Intellectual Sovereignty and the Work of the
Public Intellectual || 328
Patrick Wolfe on Settler Colonialism || 343
Acknowledgments || 361
Contributors || 365
FOREWORD
Robert Warrior
Though you won’t hear it said directly in the interviews collected here from
J. Kēhaulani Kauanui’s radio show Indigenous Politics: From Native New England
and Beyond, one way to read this book is as an Indigenous subversion of one of
the basic tools of settler-c olonial intervention, scholarship, and even entertain-
ment. From police and military interrogation to social and behavioral scientific
research to sensationalistic journalistic or travelogues, interviewing—t oo often
of rude and invasive imposition— is central to the exercise of the power of white-
ness over Native peoples and the places they inhabit.
Kauanui fights back against those centuries of imposition by showing that
a recorded conversation around prepared questions can break its own mold to
become something else. She’s far from the first Indigenous interviewer to use the
form in this way, but the conversations collected here are especially successful at
demonstrating that it’s possible to achieve the kind of scholarly and intellectual
subversion of which Indigenous thinkers so often speak.
Kauanui harnessed that subversive energy at a particularly opportune mo-
ment, just as international Indigenous politics was coming to a critical juncture
with the adoption, in 2007, of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples. The emergence of global Indigenous studies as a field be-
came possible due to, among other things, the development of the Native Amer-
ican and Indigenous Studies Association, for which Kauanui and I served on
the founding steering committee, acting council, and elected council from 2005
to 2012. Kauanui’s radio show is an invaluable chronicle of that crucial period
in the intellectual and political life of the Indigenous world. Among her guests
are many of the leading figures in global Indigenous studies, including Aileen
Moreton- Robinson, Steven Salaita, and Margo Tamez, among many others.
The interviews from Indigenous Politics: From Native New England and Be-
yond remain lively reading, though not just because of a happy coincidence of
timing. I want to suggest three factors that imbue them with energy that makes
them compelling years later. First, Kauanui clearly becomes masterful at the art
ix