The distinction between indigenous peoples and arrivants (African slaves and their descendants), made recently by native studies scholar Jodi Byrd, was intended to simultaneously attend to the divergent manifestations of settler colonialism while opening space for intersectional theorization and praxis. Yael Ben-zvi’s Native Land Talk enters this conversation by exploring how the violent history of early America engendered a complex debate regarding the nature of “native status,” a threshold concept that both united and divided indigenous and black subjects in antebellum America. One of Ben-zvi’s stated aims in the book is to challenge the tendency toward compartmentalization within the field of American studies. Stressing the importance of developing a comprehensive theoretical framework for interrogating the settler colonial project, she aims to transcend the standard native/settler and black/white binaries to produce a more thorough interrogation of “imperial liberalism,” one focused on how the concept of birthplace became a fundamental and contested...
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Native Land Talk: Indigenous and Arrivant Rights Theories
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June 1, 2019
Book Review|
June 01 2019
Native Land Talk: Indigenous and Arrivant Rights Theories
Inter/Nationalism: Decolonizing Native America and Palestine
Native Land Talk: Indigenous and Arrivant Rights Theories
. By Ben-zvi, Yael. Hanover, NH
: Dartmouth Univ. Press
. 2018
. xiii, 276 pp. Paper, $45.00; e-book available.Inter/Nationalism: Decolonizing Native America and Palestine
. By Salaita, Steven. Minneapolis
: Univ. of Minnesota Press
. 2016
. xix, 205 pp. Paper, $22.95.
David J. Carlson
David J. Carlson
David J. Carlson is a professor of English at California State University, San Bernardino. He is the author, most recently, of Imagining Sovereignty: Self-Determination in American Indian Law and Literature (Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 2016). He is also founding coeditor of Transmotion, an online, open-access journal of postmodern indigenous studies.
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American Literature (2019) 91 (2): 432–434.
Citation
David J. Carlson; Native Land Talk: Indigenous and Arrivant Rights Theories
Inter/Nationalism: Decolonizing Native America and Palestine. American Literature 1 June 2019; 91 (2): 432–434. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-7529263
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