Settler citizenship as settler colonial imposition: Jessica Leslie Arnett, ‘Unsettled Rights in Territorial Alaska: Native Land, Sovereignty, and Citizenship from the Indian Reorganization Act to Termination’, The Western Historical Quarterly, 2017 | settler colonial studies blog

Settler citizenship as settler colonial imposition: Jessica Leslie Arnett, ‘Unsettled Rights in Territorial Alaska: Native Land, Sovereignty, and Citizenship from the Indian Reorganization Act to Termination’, The Western Historical Quarterly, 2017

21May17

Abstract: This article examines Alaska Native citizenship, civil rights, land, and sovereignty in territorial Alaska from the Indian Reorganization Act to Termination. I argue that during this key shift in Indian policy, territorial and federal officials, lawmakers, and corporate interests wielded the rhetoric of citizenship, equal rights, and “reverse discrimination” as tools of dispossession against Alaska Native land and sovereignty rights. I show how Alaska Natives challenged non-native assumptions that equal U.S. citizenship and native rights to land, sovereignty, and economic self-determination were mutually exclusive. Instead, Alaska Natives advanced a vision of citizenship in which their rights as native people and ownership of the land guaranteed their rights as citizens to participate fully in the social, political, and economic life of the territory and the nation.

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