Place, Race, and Names

Layered Identities in United States v. Oregon, Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, Plaintiff-Intervenor

Bibliographic Data

ID4084142
AuthorsSusan Staiger Gooding (corresponding author)
Year1994
Volume28
Issue5
Pages1181-1229
Publication date1994-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLaw & Society Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0023-9216 • E-ISSN: 1540-5893
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3054027
OpenAlexW2524053349
LanguageEN
Citations received21
References cited31

While Native American treaty rights are one of the strongest instances of legally protected rights to social and cultural particularity in the United States and internationally, treaties and treaty litigation are also deeply racializing forms of legal discourse. This essay explores the dynamics between law and culture in the United States and the contradictory role played by federal Indian law in the transformation of indigenous identities by examining a current treaty rights case: United States v. Oregon, Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, Plaintiff-Intervenor. The essay sets the Colvilles' litigation into its historical and legal context through an analysis of the relationship between the group names, of legal and nonlegal origin, by which Colvilles identify themselves and about which this litigation is centrally concerned. The Colville Tribes have consistently layered their social identities onto a map of permanent places through intra- and intergenerational naming formulas that are used to establish identity and to negotiate historical change and colonization. Federal Indian law has consistently constructed identity in its naming of indigenous groups by decontextualizing and remapping identity to a fixed map of race. Thus, federal legal discourse precludes a consideration of the very aspects of Colville identity that are central to the recognition of the claims put forth in their current litigation

Genealogy · Geography · Plaintiff · Political science · Race (biology · Reservation · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Gender Studies · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law · Race, History, and American Society

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