On diasporic indigeneity: Jonathan Robert Fairchild, They Intend to Conduct Us Out of Their Country: The Choctaw Diaspora, PhD dissertation, University of Houston, 2024 | settler colonial studies blog

On diasporic indigeneity: Jonathan Robert Fairchild, They Intend to Conduct Us Out of Their Country: The Choctaw Diaspora, PhD dissertation, University of Houston, 2024

31Jan25

Abstract: This dissertation explores the complicated relationship between land, sovereignty, identity, and belonging at both the individual and tribal level in the Choctaw diaspora from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. Tribal members of what are today the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians (Louisiana), the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, as well as other bands, navigated their relationships to one another and to a Choctaw identity across that diaspora, branching outwards from the spiritual locus of Nanih Waiya, the “Mother Mound” in Mississippi. Over the period examined, Choctaws faced numerous challenges and intense pressures: ranging from epidemic disease, warfare and civil war, land dispossession and removal, racism and segregation, and generations of repressive federal, state, and local policies and interactions. Choctaws within the diaspora utilized many different strategies to survive, adapt, and thrive, including migration, warfare, diplomacy, and trade. While the diaspora began in earnest in the mid-eighteenth century, within a century there were bands across the American south – in Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Texas, and Oklahoma. Identity and belonging within that diaspora grew complicated, especially after the Dawes Act turned identity into a politicized issue of race through the imposition of “blood quantum.” Choctaws across the diaspora in the mid-twentieth century engaged in increased political activity, asserting their identity and promoting tribal sovereignty. By the turn of the century, the diaspora saw Choctaws spread throughout the nation, represented by multiple federally or state recognized bands ranging across the entirety of the historic geographic range of the diaspora. Though Termination and Relocation were federal policies aimed at continued settler colonialism and dispossession, indigenous agency and activism turned the mid-twentieth century into a period of cultural rebirth. Choctaw resilience and dedication to sovereignty and self-determination led to the creation of multiple federally or state recognized bands, including the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians (Louisiana), the MOWA Choctaw (Alabama; state recognized), the Choctaw-Apache of Ebarb (Louisiana; state recognized), and the Clifton Choctaw (Louisiana, state recognized), and Afro-Choctaws, descended from the Choctaw Freedpeople, formerly enslaved by Choctaws prior to the Civil War. These groups continue to navigate identity and “Choctawness” within the diaspora today. The historical, cultural, social, and ethnological events which have created so many Choctaw bands have created a rich, complex, meaningful legacy of what it means to be Choctaw, while leaving a powerful unifying sense of identity. Whether Choctaws are in Mississippi, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Alabama, or elsewhere, they have continued to defend their culture and sovereignty. The diaspora is alive and well, and the memory and symbol of Nanih Waiya remains a powerful beacon uniting Choctaws together. The Choctaw diaspora is the story of struggles, of displacement, of dispossession. Much more than that, however – it is the story of memory, of unity, of resistance, of survival, of perseverance.

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