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2 - The Algebra of Federal Indian Law: The Hard Trail of Decolonizing and Americanizing the White Man’s Jurisprudence

from Part I - Core Concepts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2019

By
Robert A. Williams
Edited by
Grant Christensen  and
Melissa L. Tatum
Grant Christensen
Affiliation:
University of North Dakota
Melissa L. Tatum
Affiliation:
University of Arizona
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Summary

The Algebra of Federal Indian Law: suggests that legal discourse inherited from a European perspective has helped to justify colonialism and perpetrate the ongoing subordination of Indian tribes. Because the common law was inherited from a system that treated non-Christian, non-White, indigenous peoples as inferior, judicial treatment of Indians can never reconcile competing worldviews. Instead, Williams argues for a rejection of European legal norms and the creation of an ‘Americanized’ approach to Indian law that reconsiders the origins of the power dynamic between Indian and European peoples to synthesize a new worldview.

Keywords

colonialismMarshall TrilogydiscoveryOliphantautochthonous
Type
Chapter
Information
Reading American Indian Law
Foundational Principles
 , pp. 47 - 71
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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References

Further Reading

Bradford, William, “With a Very Great Blame in Our Hearts”: Reparations, Reconciliation, and an American Indian Plea for Peace with Justice, 27 Am. Indian L. Rev. 1 (2002).Google Scholar
Clinton, Robert, Redressing the Legacy of Conquest: A Vision Quest for a Decolonized Federal Indian Law, 46 Ark. L. Rev. 77 (1993).Google Scholar
Crenshaw, Kimberle & Gotanda, Neil, Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement (The New Press 1996).Google Scholar
Bruce Duthu, N., The Thurgood Marshall Papers and the Quest for a Principled Theory of Tribal Sovereignty: Fueling the Fires of Tribal/State Conflict, 21 Vt. L. Rev. 47 (1996).Google Scholar
Frickey, Philip, A Common Law for Our Age of Colonialism: The Judicial Divestiture of Indian Tribal Authority over Nonmembers, 109 Yale L.J. 1 (1999).Google Scholar
Frickey, Philip, Domesticating Federal Indian Law, 81 Minn. L. Rev. 31 (1996).Google Scholar
Porter, Robert, A Proposal to the Hanodaganyas to Decolonize Federal Indian Control Law, 31 U. Mich. J.L. Ref. 899 (1998).Google Scholar
Williams, Robert A. Jr., Documents of Barbarism: The Contemporary Legacy of European Racism and Colonialism in the Narrative Traditions of Federal Indian Law, 31 Ariz. L. Rev. 237 (1989).Google Scholar
Williams, Robert A. Jr., The American Indian in Western Legal Thought (Oxford University Press 1990).Google Scholar

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