Elimination Through the Production of Race: The Settler Colonial Constitution of "Native Americans" and Indigenous Attempts to Define Themselves

Abstract

The ability of Native American and Indigenous peoples and nations to rhetorically constitute who they are and who their ancestors are is a fundamental act of sovereignty. The constitution of race has supported many settler colonial injustices through rhetorically constructing and racializing “Native American” bodies. Instead of listening to and honoring how Indigenous and Native American peoples define themselves, the settler colonial machine violates Native American and Indigenous sovereignty by constituting what is “Native American” for them. Tracing the rhetorical constitution of Native American and Indigenous identities as it comes to bear through the settler colonial mechanisms of blood quantum, anthropology and the ancient Kennewick human remains, and the case of Bonnichsen v. United States, I argue that the biological construction of race and scientific racism has constructed paradigmatic definitions of “Native American” that work to eliminate Indigenous peoples from being recognized as “Native American.” Constituted by way of blood, bones, and the law, the settler colonial racial category of “Native American” operates as a universalized epistemic center that turns settler colonialism’s eliminatory parts by making Indigenous peoples less “Native American,” limiting the legal recognition of “Native Americans” to settler modernity, and disassociating ancient human remains from present-day Indigenous peoples. Further, I posit the Blackfeet and the Native American coalition attempt to find ways to define themselves through the channels of blood quantum, the federal law, and science. It seems that race is a settler colonial mechanism that allows for the honoring of Indigenous rhetorical sovereignty and continuation of survivance by being utilized in different ways to decolonize. Settler colonialism is a machine that mechanizes race to support Indigenous elimination, but like any machine, it can be repurposed to produce decolonial outcomes that support Native American and Indigenous sovereignty and survivance.