Reading Cook-Lynn: Anti-Colonialism, Cultural Resistance, and Native Empowerment

Abstract

This work is an intellectual history and cultural study of Cook-Lynn's scholarship and other writings. Most scholars who discuss United States imperialism often prioritize its overseas activities and reduce the colonization of Indian nations to a non-issue. Cook-Lynn, a Native academic and activist, equates U. S. domestic imperialism with the destruction of Indian lives and cultures, refuting the idea that the United States subdued indigenous nations for their own good. A staunch believer in Indian sovereignty, Cook-Lynn holds that Indian treaties established elementary principles of sovereignty and possessory rights for American tribal nations and opposes U.S. strategy to incorporate Indian treaty rights and land ownership into the ethnic heap of multiculturalism. Seeking to rekindle Indian nationalism and ensure the continuance of Indian nations, Cook-Lynn's activist oeuvre advocates for their cultural, political, and social relevance and challenges claims of Indian irrelevance in American history. Cook-Lynn deploys a resistance discourse to the U.S. culture of imperialism to strategize Indian empowerment and advocate for the sovereignty of tribal governance. This dissertation examines her political theories on Indian sovereignty and her focus on the effects of U.S. colonialism on land dispossession, oppression, silenced voices, the devaluation of tribal cultures, and the struggle for Indian self-determination. This interdisciplinary study connects American studies with Native American studies; it not only examines Cook-Lynn's empowerment strategies and legitimizes the decolonization theory that informs her work but also confronts the author's dogmas.