Sovereign Selves: American Indian Autobiography and the LawThis book is an exploration of how American Indian autobiographers' approaches to writing about their own lives have been impacted by American legal systems from the Revolutionary War until the 1920s. Historically, Native American autobiographers have written in the shadow of "Indian law," a nuanced form of natural law discourse with its own set of related institutions and forms (the reservation, the treaty, etc.). In Sovereign Selves, David J. Carlson develops a rigorously historicized argument about the relationship between the specific colonial model of "Indian" identity that was developed and disseminated through U.S. legal institutions, and the acts of autobiographical self-definition by the "colonized" Indians expected to fit that model. Carlson argues that by drawing on the conventions of early colonial treaty-making, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Indian autobiographers sought to adapt and redefine the terms of Indian law as a way to assert specific property-based and civil rights. Focusing primarily on the autobiographical careers of two major writers (William Apess and Charles Eastman), Sovereign Selves traces the way that their sustained engagement with colonial legal institutions gradually enabled them to produce a new rhetoric of "Indianness." |
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Common terms and phrases
allotment policy American Indian argues assimilation assimilationist assumptions autobiographical act autobiographical writing chapter Charles Eastman Christian claims colonial contact colonial legal context contractarian conversion narrative Cornplanter critical cultural Dawes Act Deep Woods discourse of allotment discourse of Indian discussion dominant early Elaine Goodale English experience federal Forest historical Indian autobiography Indian Boyhood Indian identity Indian law Indian Nullification Indian policy individual institutions Iroquois kind language legal discourse legal domination legal engagement legal models liberal literary Mary Jemison Mashpee missionary model of Indian models of identity modern Native American autobiography nature nineteenth century normative notes Occom Ojibwe Parker paternalistic Pequot Pequot War political position Prucha readers religious Samson Occom Santee Sioux seems self-definition Seneca sense Sioux Standing Bear struggle subsequent suggests tion traditional treaty tribal tribe U.S. Indian law University Press William Apess Winnemucca Woods to Civilization York
References to this book
Medicine Bundle: Indian Sacred Performance and American Literature, 1824-1932 Joshua David Bellin No preview available - 2008 |