Keyword: Indigenous studies

Review of Biopolitics, Geopolitics, Life: Settler States and Indigenous Presence edited by René Dietrich and Kerstin Knopf (Duke University Press)

By Leah Kuragano

Questions of violence, governance, life, and land have long animated critique within settler colonial studies and Indigenous studies. Biopolitics, Geopolitics, Life interrogates these lines of inquiry by centering Indigenous politics and onto-epistemologies from a variety of disciplines and across a range of settler colonial contexts to address the enmeshments of bio- and geopolitical logics and practices.

The Black Shoals Dossier

Karyn Recollet, "Landing Glyph," 2022. Photo courtesy of artist.
By Tiffany Lethabo King, Stephanie Latty, Stephanie Lumsden, Karyn Recollet and Megan Scribewith Beenash Jafri

This dossier collects four reflections on The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies (2019) with responses by its author Tiffany Lethabo King. This dossier is based on an American Studies Association 2021 roundtable organized by Beenash Jafri.

Commodifying Tragedy: Representing Violence against Native American Women in The Cold Dish and Longmire

"Spirits of the Realms" by Haisla Collins, Jerry Whitehead, Sharifah Marsden, Mehren Razmpoosh, Richard Shorty and Vanessa Walterson. Courtesy of ActiveHistory.ca.
By Cécile Heim

By focusing on the representation of violence against Native American women in Craig Johnson’s The Cold Dish and the television show Longmire, this article demonstrates how these cultural productions perpetuate settler-colonial power relations. Although Longmire is one of the more progressive shows thanks to its development of Native American characters and storylines, the settler-colonial status quo is affirmed in four main ways. Not only do the novel and TV show redeploy the racist stock characters of the Magical Indian and the White Savior, but the TV show especially also reiterates a version of the stereotypical Vanishing American narrative inherited from the Western genre. Furthermore, both cultural productions heavily pathologize the Cheyenne community, depriving them of agency. Finally, the novel and show both transform pain, suffering, and grief into transferable commodities. This allows them to disinvest the pain and tragedy suffered by the Native American characters in order to reinvest this tragic potential in white characters, which serves to reinforce the white characters’ heroism. The commodification of tragic potential and emphasis on its sentimentalization help obscure the settler-colonial origins and systemic perpetuation of violence against Native American women. In sum, this analysis shows that the deeply ingrained and normalized settler-colonial ideology inherent to representational strategies limit the progressive potential of even the most benevolent and well-meaning white cultural productions.