Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

9-2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Philosophy

Advisor

Carol C. Gould

Committee Members

Linda Martin Alcoff

Serene Khader

Subject Categories

Ethics and Political Philosophy | Indigenous Studies | Native American Studies | Other Philosophy

Keywords

Native American, Indigenous, Kinship Ontology, American Indian, Choctaw Nation, Native Identity

Abstract

Indigenous identities in North America are much more complex than generally assumed. No single definition of “Native (American),” “(American) Indian,” or related terms provides a set of necessary and sufficient conditions that accurately or usefully describe all and only the right individuals and communities. I argue that understanding Native identities in the contemporary context requires examining multiple interconnected dimensions of Nativeness, articulated here as Enrollment and Recognition, Tribal Ethnicities, Native Race, Indian Panethnicity, and Indigenous Nationhood.

In the U.S., Indigenous identities are usually oversimplified as either Enrollment in a Recognized Tribe or as Native Race. While both of these aspects of Nativeness are undeniably important, neither alone (or both jointly) can offer a complete picture of Native identity that is useful and accurate. A fuller understanding of Nativeness also includes Tribal Ethnicities, Indian Panethnicity, and Indigenous Nationhood. Different individuals—including the author—may rightly be considered Native in one sense and not-Native in another. Right now, these aspects of Nativeness are like a tangled net, with different aspects often being elided or confused one for another in ways that harm and erase Natives and sever settler colonial projects.

Making sense of Native identities requires examining them in light of Indigenous social ontologies that are fundamentally relational and conceive of persons and the land as constitutively interconnected by kinship relations defined by reciprocal responsibilities. Each aspect of Nativeness articulated in this dissertation is an expression of Native social ontologies, a response to the settler colonial suppression of Native ways of life, or a combination thereof.

Enrollment and Recognition is a crucial expression of tribes’ sovereignty, yet this legal status is directly tied to Western social ontological views and ultimately subject to settler governments’ authority. Tribal Ethnicities capture the way Native peoples are not exclusively political or institutional entities but also intergenerational ethnic families whose persistence transcends national, racial, and legal boundaries and permeates everyday life. Native Race is the shared racial identity thrust upon diverse Indigenous groups by settler colonial attempts to eliminate all other aspects of Nativeness. Properly understood, Native race has little to do with either phenotype or genetics, but rather turns on vulnerability to antinative racism—and solidaristic resistance to racism. Indian Panethnicity is a response to shared racialized experiences of both suffering and activism, and the resulting growth of shared kinship and culture across tribal lines. Instead of eliding specific tribal ethnic or national identities with a homogenized Indianness, Panethnicity arises in part through the shared experience of defending precarious ethnic and national identities. Finally, Indigenous Nationhood means exercising sovereignty in accordance with the kinship responsibilities of specific Indigenous political communities with the land. Decolonization does not aim at sovereignty as power over lands or citizens, but sovereignty as power to shape Indigenous futures in which peoples and lands are free to fulfill their responsibilities to each other.

My goal is to disentangle this conceptual net, providing useful explanations of these interconnected aspects of Nativeness. Each way of using the term “Native” exists only amid the context of the other uses; no one concept of Nativeness is ontologically prior to the others, but they are all needed to make sense of Native identities today. As for the question that titles this dissertation: “Hattak Vpi Homma” mvt Miha Nanta Fehna? What does “Native American” really mean? It means we are still here. We were always here, and we always will be.

Download

Share

COinS