The Logic of the Modern Nation-State and the Legal Construction of Native American Tribal Identity
. , The Logic of the Modern Nation-State and the Legal Construction of Native American Tribal Identity Richard Warren Perry* Introduction I. A Nation State of Mind "Nationalism," argued Hans Kohn a half-century ago, "is first and foremost a state of mind, an act of consciousness."' As June Starr notes in a companion Article in this volume, nations are hardly the inevitable entities—the natural convergences of blood and territory—that their propagandists insist. Rather, Starr tells us, "nationalistic ideas are 'social constructs,' products of particular times, places, and events."^ In Benedict Anderson's recent and immensely influential formulation, the nation is an "imagined community." "Nationality[,] . nation-ness, [and] nationalism," he tells us, "are cultural artifacts of a particular kind."^ The "nation," Anderson argues, is a form of community * Assistant Professor of Criminology, Law & Society, University of California, Irvine. B.A., 1981 University of California, Berkeley; M.A., 1984, University of California, Berkeley; J.D., 1990, Stanford University; Ph.D., 1994, University of California, Berkeley. This Article is a considerably revised version of a paper presented at the 1994 Law & Society Association Annual Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona. It was given as part of a panel entitled Nationalism Reconsidered: Ethnicity, Marginality, and Identity in State Formation organized by Leslye Obiora. Other panelists were June Starr and Jo Carillo. Our respondent was Lawrence Friedman. I thank Professor Friedman and the other panelists for their useful comments. I have been pleased to supervise an award-winning 1994 University of California, Irvine honors thesis on the Federal Acknowledgement Process, American Indians and the Illusion ofFederal Recognition, by Jody Moore.
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