"We Are This People and We Intend to Endure as Such": Black and Indigenous Peoplehood and Persistence
Name:
azu_etd_16986_sip1_m.pdf
Size:
8.575Mb
Format:
PDF
Description:
Dissertation not available
Publisher
The University of Arizona.Rights
Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction, presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author.Embargo
Dissertation not available (per author's request)Abstract
This dissertation, “We Are This People and We Intend to Endure As Such”: Black and Indigenous Peoplehood and Persistence, engages the Indigenous peoplehood matrix, a core theoretical construct developed by Indigenous scholars and comprised of four interrelated elements: land, language, sacred history, and ceremonial cycle. In a comprehensive overview of the peoplehood matrix, I note that the model emerges, in part, from anthropology’s theories of enduring peoples and persistent cultural systems, then modified and further fortified with Indigenous epistemologies. In my research, I employ the peoplehood matrix to delineate Indigenous cultural identity and introduce a model of African American peoplehood, respectfully adapted from the Indigenous peoplehood matrix, comprised of the elements of embodied Blackness, expression, heritage, and spirituality. I underscore the attributes of both matrices that represent persistent cultural identity systems. Through this analysis, I demonstrate that, in both models, the interconnectedness of the elements of peoplehood establishes and maintains persistent cultural identity with a built-in capacity, in the elements of sacred history and heritage, for continuity—a necessary characteristic for persistence, particularly within the milieu of settler colonialism. Within this context, I argue that resistance to assimilation and erasure further coalesces a people, is inherent to American Indian and African American peoplehood, and corresponds with continuing demands for sovereignty and emancipation. In making this argument, I identify appropriation and annihilation as the double-pronged settler-colonial imperative in relation to American Indigeneity and American Blackness, while also naming various mechanisms of the peoples’ ongoing resistance to it. Here, I introduce and elucidate the ideas of “oppositional identification,” “oppositional coalescence,” and “contrast mechanisms” and advance the Peoplehood and Persistence model, a tool for the analysis of boundary maintenance. Further, I examine the settler-biopolitical aims to exploit Black bodies and American Indian lands via strategic educational policies and the eradication of American Indian gender systems, many with extra-binary gender roles.Type
textElectronic Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.Degree Level
doctoralDegree Program
Graduate CollegeAmerican Indian Studies