“Transits of Empire” and “Black Fungibility”: The Co-production of Black and Native Women Objectivities through Choctaw Sovereignty Claims

• In Event: Entanglements of Empire: Blackness, Indigeneity, and the (Un)making of Carceral-Colonial Space

Abstract

This talk explores the intersections of Native claims to sovereignty and Black citizenship within settler colonialism. It reviews the archival materials of refused applications for enrollment to the Choctaw Nation from 1898 -1914. I argue that the question of Black and Native positionality depends on two important ideological moves: first, the fixing of Blackness to the position of the slave and second, the emergence of Black women as the reproductive site of non-sovereignty. I conclude with a speculative reading of applicants’ testimony as an assertion that their relationships to the land and each other move beyond settler notions of sovereignty.

Presenter

• Sandra Lynne Harvey, University of California, Irvine