Apr 10 2017
The Workshops: Real and Performative Properties
Starting this week, we will begin posting more information about the individual workshops and the conveners. We begin with Workshop 3 “Real and Performative Properties: Competing Claims to Citizenship, Indigeneity, and Land” with Beth Piatote and Sabine N. Meyer. Here is the introduction of their workshop at OSI 2017:
Scholars from various disciplines have long asserted the central role of property in the colonization of the North American continent and the emergence of the United States. The transformation of indigenous lands into private and federal property has been identified as a foundational aspect of American empire-building. Not surprisingly, debates about real property – land – dominated the relationship between Native Americans and the settler nation, particularly in the nineteenth century, in the context of the federal policies of removal and allotment. While the struggle over real property remains the bedrock of Native-settler relations, as the Standing Rock protests demonstrate, it has also generated conflicts over other, more metaphorical “properties,” such as the properties of citizenship (both tribal and U.S. citizenship) and indigeneity as such.
