Chapter 7. The Limits of Control

Anthropology, the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, and Federal Recognition in the United States

Bibliographic Data

ID11610794
AuthorsN Barron (0000-0003-1759-3028, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume112
Issue3
Pages135-156
Publication date2023-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueTransactions of the American Philosophical Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0065-9746 • E-ISSN: 2325-9264
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/tap.2023.a918771
OpenAlexW4391793944
LanguageEN
References cited9

Chapter 7. The Limits of Control: Anthropology, the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, and Federal Recognition in the United States1 Nicholas Barron (bio) In the context of the United States, anthropology has long been called upon to aid in the adjudication of disputes regarding the political status of Indigenous groups. In the absence of a discrete documentary record, anthropologists and their ethnographic and ethnohistorical findings serve as an alternative archive for those trying to make heads or tails of the complex mosaic that is Native history. However, this is hardly an uncomplicated endeavor. Positioned as expert witnesses, scholars are often compelled to translate their findings into the stricture of federal law. Of course, anthropologists working in an applied capacity have long recognized the difficulty of such a task. As Nancy Lurie once remarked regarding her own [End Page 135] participation in the US Indian Claims Commission during the 1950s, “A court of law ... is not intended nor able to discern the technical merits of highly complex, academic differences of opinion.”2 Countless scholars have illustrated with great acuity the difficulty that comes with attempting to bring the intricacies and nuances of scholarly concepts and debates before courts and governmental bodies.3 Taking inspiration from these incisive critiques as well as the theoretical insights of science and technology studies, I explore an instance in which the anthropologist/ethnohistorian is no longer the one doing the translating as it were. To be more precise, I consider a case in which the ideas of a social scientist, encased in books and articles, are taken up by others—particularly government officials—for unforeseen ends. From the perspective of Indigenous communities, the operationalizing of extant ethnographic and ethnohistorical knowledge presents an ambiguous prospect. On the one hand, anthropological archives and expertise have been operationalized by Native actors and their non-Native interlocutors to affirm hard-won cultural identities, territories, and political statuses. On the other hand, these same sources of knowledge have been used by others to obstruct such affirmations. In many instances, opposing parties find themselves invoking and debating the meaning of the same set of historical objects (e.g., a document, map, monograph, etc.), arriving at wildly opposing interpretations.4 Such has been the case for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, one of several federally recognized American Indian Tribes of the US–Mexico borderlands. Unlike many other tribes in the US, the Pascua Yaqui have not relied primarily on the courts or formal bureaucratic mechanisms of recognition (e.g., the Federal Acknowledgment Process) to establish their political [End Page 136] status.5 Rather, the Pascua Yaqui have channeled their campaign for federal acknowledgment through Congress, first in the late 1970s and again in the early 1990s. In both instances, Pascua Yaqui representatives and federal officials invoked the name of Edward Spicer, a twentieth-century American anthropologist and ethnohistorian of the greater Southwest. As a scholar, Spicer devoted his career to studying Yaqui communities on both sides of the border. As an advocate, Spicer committed himself to maintaining the cultural and social distinction of the Pascua Yaqui with whom he worked from 1935 until his death in 1983. In the campaign to secure federal recognition, Pascua Yaqui representatives and federal officials presented and interpreted the meaning of Spicer’s depictions of this borderlands people. More specific, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) attempted to use Spicer’s characterization of the Pascua Yaqui as “political refugees” to argue that the group’s history of transnational movement disqualified them for recognition as a “historic tribe”—a politically consequential term that I expand on in the text that follows. Conversely, the Pascua Yaqui argued that the BIA’s reading of Spicer was both limited and inaccurate. I am less concerned with resolving this dispute than I am with the implications of transporting Spicer’s depictions of Yaqui culture and history into new arenas, especially those arenas that are particularly germane to the functioning of state and tribal relations. By historicizing the conditions under which Spicer developed his portrayals of the Yaqui, I show how an attempt to contest essentializing depictions of Native history during the 1970s was, ironically, operationalized by the federal government in the 1990s to undermine

Tribe · Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture · Latin American and Latino Studies · Migration, Health, Geopolitics, Historical Geography

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