Persistence of the Indian: Legal Recognition of Native Hawaiians and the Opportunity of the Other

摘要

A decade of controversy over the Akaka Bill that would extend recognition to native Hawaiians under Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution has debated numerous meanings of the Indian in an effort to reconstitute Hawaiian governance. This paper applies a theory of legal aesthetics to apprehend the postcolonial dynamics of legal recognition through the trope of the Indian. It shows that the persistence of the Indian as a hollowed legal fiction enabling the power of Western law is also susceptible to a creative play in which law is resisted and deflected into new ideas of indigenous sovereignty. The trope of the Indian persists not only as a marker of the continuing discursive divide between what is civilized and savage, but also as a mechanism for aesthetic reimagination of alternative political possibilities.View full textDownload full textRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2011.544476