The Indigenous Paradox: Rights, Sovereignty, and Culture in the Americas

Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights

by Jonas Bens

"This book contends that indigeneity is a paradoxical formation. The paradoxical nature of indigeneity becomes apparent in the relationship between an indigenous community and the (post)colonial state, or, rather, in the relationship between an indigenous claimant and the national law. On the one hand, the indigenous community rejects the state and views the regulation of its affairs by the law of the state as violation of its integrity. On the other hand, the indigenous community depends on the state, its courts, and its law to protect certain rights that are seen as emanating from the indigenous community itself and not from the national legal system. Jonas Bens calls this formation, in which the indigenous must appear as both part of the state and as dissociated from it-politically as well as legally-the "indigenous paradox." It is his argument that the phenomenon of indigeneity comes into being when native communities engage with the law of the (post)colonial state in which they find themselves. In other words, native communities become indigenous when they begin to occupy the paradoxical legal position Bens aims to describe in this book. Therefore, to understand the discourses of indigeneity, it is paramount to follow the language, the textual genres, and the doctrine of the law. In this book, Bens employs approaches from legal studies and anthropology (more specifically, semiotic anthropology and intertextual analysis) to investigate the very texts that speak most explicitly to and about indigeneity: landmark indigenous rights cases in the Americas"--

280 pages, Hardcover

Published July 3, 2020

Reviews

[Amelia Saffold · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this book for a research job. I thought it did a really good job of showing how U.S. has and still defines Indigenous sovereignty and Indigeneity itself through law. Appreciated the in-depth analysis of specific legal cases. My focus was the Johnson v. McIntosh case, which was well covered. As an anti-Locke nerd (and by that I mean I absolutely despise him with all of my being), I found the section on how The Second Treatise on Government impacted colonial law in terms of who people at the time thought deserved property to be quality analysis. Will definitely be recommending this book to my history professors.