Week 10: Remaking Space through Activism

(On Biolsi's "The Birth of the Reservation:
Making the Modern Individual among the Lakota"
and Andrea Smith's "Rape of the Land")

As we got a glimpse of by screening parts of the film in class last week, this week's readings revealed the situation of Natives and their claim, or lack there of, on territories and lands. Biolsi focuses on the Lakota bands, which "had been sequestered on the Great Sioux Reservation, comprising the western half of what is now South Dakota" (Biolsi, 28). Administrative techniques, from recording "remarkable English translations of Lakota names [...] such as "Bad Cunt," "Dirty Prick," and "Shit Head"" to deeming them as those with "no individual identities in any practical administrative sense," eventually completely politically subdued the Laota bands by 1885 (28-9). Biolsi carefully unpacks and analyzes 'property ownership,' 'competence,' 'degree of Indian blood,' and 'geneology' to "explore the modes by which particular kinds of individuals were constructed among the Lakota by the discourses and practices of the OIA" (44). Instead of concluding that a distinct Lakota culture was erased or that the administrators intended to erase native custom, Biolsi ends on the note that "an autonomous Lakota culture survived and even thrived: [...] and indigenous form of political process" (44). I especially appreciated the last sentence in which Biolsi reconciles the conflict that the two parties are commonly thought to have and furthers the discussion by stating "the OIA made them [Lakota] into a new kind of self-governors, with a new way of doing things that would be just as difficult to escape. That is the essence of subjection." This concept of subjection and "the new definitions of the individual" is definitely what I want to delve into during class discussion.

On the other hand, in "Rape of the Land" Smith describes colonization and the subjection of Native Americans through the lens of 'sex' and 'rape.' She introduces the idea of "sexual colonization" and the violable nature of Native lands, and its connection to bodies, particularly those of women (55). Compared to Biolsi who focused a lot on politics, Smith rather highlights the environmental aspect of colonization. She discusses whether human beings can and should control and claim sovereignty over nature. Later she ties in the concept of race and sex, and the discrimination against such categories, hence racism and sexism. It was interesting to read Smith's research and new take on colonization, which is often described in terms of politics and economics.