Hopi Tradition as Jurisdiction: On the Potentializing Limits of Tribal Sovereignty

34 Pages Posted: 27 Nov 2012

Date Written: 2011

Abstract

In this article I reconsider Hopi tradition as jurisdiction — reflexive moments of Hopi legal discourse that orient to the limits of Hopi sovereignty, even as they presuppose its power. I explore these themes in two significant moments of Hopi political history. First, I consider the uses of tradition in the creation of the contemporary Hopi tribe through the field notes of the US agent charged with drafting the 1936 Hopi Constitution. Then I consider more contemporary uses of tradition in recent Hopi tribal court cases that extended judicial power over matters reserved for local village leadership. Both instances suggest efforts to potentialize tribal power even as they orient explicitly to the limits of that authority. These traditions are thus, ironically, understood not as replaying Euro-American logics of nationalist totalities, but as indigenous sociopolitical actions that unsettle static representations of Hopi cultural identity and the sovereignty claimed through them.

Keywords: jurisdiction, soverignty, American Indians, Hopi

Suggested Citation

Richland, Justin, Hopi Tradition as Jurisdiction: On the Potentializing Limits of Tribal Sovereignty (2011). Law and Social Inquiry, Vol. 36, No. 1, 201-234, Winter 2011, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2179275

Justin Richland (Contact Author)

University of Chicago ( email )

1101 East 58th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
United States

HOME PAGE: http://anthropology.uchicago.edu/people/faculty_member/justin_b._richland

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
67
Abstract Views
662
Rank
608,061
PlumX Metrics