Indigenous Feminist Pedagogy Disorienting Whiteness as Disappearance: Passage of the Violence Against Women Act of 2013 Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors Bable, Lori Citation Bable, Lori. (2020). Indigenous Feminist Pedagogy Disorienting Whiteness as Disappearance: Passage of the Violence Against Women Act of 2013 (Doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA). Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction, presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 27/09/2021 10:49:16 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/656816 INDIGENOUS FEMINIST PEDAGOGY DISORIENTING WHITENESS AS DISAPPEARANCE: PASSAGE OF THE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ACT OF 2013 by Dorothy “Lori” Bable _____________________________ Copyright © Dorothy L. Bable 2020 Copyright © Lori Bable 2020 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfillment for the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2020 2 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I want to acknowledge the citizens of the Tohono O’odham Nation and Pascua Yaqui Tribe on whose homelands the University of Arizona and Tucson exist; without their stewardship and persistence, this dissertation and my graduate education would not have been possible. Next, I want to thank Amy C. Kimme Hea, Melissa L. Tatum, William P. Simmons, and Jeremy S. Godfrey for being an incredibly supportive, visionary, and encouraging committee who persistently affirmed staying true to my feminist and critical race commitments. While honoring my own vision for this project, my committee mentored, challenged, and encouraged me through difficult as well as “breakthrough” moments of scholarly transformation and development. I am especially grateful to Amy for supporting the idea and eventual formation of a non-traditional, multidisciplinary committee, bringing insights from Rhetoric and Composition, Law, Feminist Pedagogy, and Gender and Women’s Studies. I thank Rebecca Tsosie who helped me develop a solid understanding of property law and federal Indian law, and whose passion and encouragement to critique the legal system was a rare treasure in law school. A very special thank you to Mary Kathryn Nagle, Deborah Parker, Sarah Deer, Jacqueline Agtuca, Kēhaulani Kauanui, and other Native women scholars, survivors and activists whose transformative insights built the foundation for this project. I would also like to thank Cheryl Harris for her disruptive theoretical framework of whiteness as property, without which the methodology in this project would not be possible. I also thank Cristina Ramirez, who encouraged me to apply to the UA RCTE Program, without whom I might have never imagined the study of rhetoric as a good fit for my social change aspirations. I am grateful to my friends, family, and colleagues who have supported me throughout this long journey when self-doubt and exhaustion crept in, helping me to know I could persist. Thank you, Camilla Lee, Sally Benson, and Tom Knauer, my Zoom writing partners during the COVID-19 pandemic—I could not have finished without our virtual writing sessions throughout this year. I thank my friend, Rose, for many deep and soulful conversations about racism and white privilege—you earned your PhD right along with me, my dear sister friend. To my family, especially my mom and Michael, who reminded me repeatedly no matter how hard and how long the path seemed that they believed I could do it. The limited space here is insufficient for me to thank everyone who has supported me in some way, and my gratitude to everyone is beyond rhetorical expression. 4 “Just follow your heart; it has more intelligence than the brain.” ~Donna Joyce Simmons First, I dedicate this dissertation to my mother, Donna, who taught me love, and to her soul-mother, my great grandmother, Nora “Grancy” Sams. As a daughter of German and Irish immigrants, Grancy survived domestic violence and raised her two children as a single mother during the Great Depression. Her light carries on in my family, and her love keeps alive the realization that as humans, we belong to one another, knowing no one is free until all peoples have equal access to resources. Second, this dissertation is dedicated to all Native women survivors of domestic and sexual violence. May the hope of ridding the world of all forms of violence amplify until this darkness can no longer exist. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES…………………………………………………………………….......9 ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………...10 INTRODUCTION ARTICULATING INDIGENOUS FEMINIST PEDAGOGY…………………………..11 Introduction………….…………………………………………………………...11 VAWA History……...…………………………………………………………...14 Counterstorytelling as Adapted Critical Race Practice..…………………………17 Project Overview………………………………………………………………...29 CHAPTER ONE INDIGENOUS FEMINIST PEDAGOGIES: BUILDING LITERACIES OF STRUCTURAL WHITENESS AS DISAPPEARANCE………………...……………...35 Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………..35 Introduction: Visioning Purpose…………………………………………………36 Awakening to White Privilege and Reproductions of the White Supremacist System……………………………………………………………………………38 Legal Education and Feminist Theory…………………………………………...42 Critically Sovereign Feminist Methodology Enacted as Pedagogical Praxis……46 Situating Critical Race Theory…………………………………………...52 Whiteness as Property……………………………………………………54 Whiteness as Disappearance Extending Critical Race Theory…………..58 How Sovereignty Shapes Critical Race Theory………………………….63 Tribal Critical Race Theory (TribalCrit)……………………………..64 Features of a Critically Sovereign Feminist Methodology………..…67 Movement for the Safety of Native Women……………………………………..77 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….79 6 CHAPTER TWO WHITENESS AS DISAPPEARANCE IN FEDERAL INDIAN LAW: EPISTEMIC CLOSURE OF “INDIAN” AND ITS IMPACT ON NATIVE WOMEN……………………………………………….………………………………...81 Introduction………….…………………………………………………………...81 Articulations of Whiteness as Disappearance in FIL and Policy………………...84 Marshall Trilogy: Cannons for Construction of Disappearance.………...86 Johnson v. McIntosh: Discovery Doctrine….…………...…….…87 Cherokee Nation v. Georgia: Domestic-Dependent Nations…….90 Worcester v. Georgia: Federal Plenary Power and Extraconstitutional Tribal Nations……………………………….93 Federal Indian Law Policy Eras………………………………………….97 Treaty Making Era…………………………………………….....99 Allotment, Removal, and Reservation Era……………………..100 Reorganization Era……………………………………………...105 Termination Era: Wholesale Disappearance of Tribal Nations...108 Self-Determination Era…………………………………………112 Indian Civil Rights Act……………………………………..114 Indian Child Welfare Act…………………………………...116 Title 25: Creation of Federal Indian Programs……………..117 Modern Series—Theme of Seven Cases: Diminishment of Sovereignty……………………………………………………………..118 Rhetorical Dispossession in Oliphant…………………………………..120 Whiteness as Disappearance as the Logics of Federal Indian Law…………….132 Significance of VAWA 2013 Tribal Provisions………………………………..134 VAWA History…………………………………………………………136 VAWA Tribal Provisions………………………………………………137 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………...140 CHAPTER THREE MARY KATHRYN NAGLE’S SLIVER OF A FULL MOON: PARTICIPATORY PERFORMANCES FOR CRITICAL SOVEREIGNTY CONSCIOUSNESS……………………………………………………………….……141 Introduction………….………………………………………………………….141 7 Play Overview……….………………………………………………………….144 Traditional Legal Conceptions and Sliver’s Reformulation of Time………………………………………………………………………….…149 Fixed Concepts and Fluid Metaphors….……………………………….150 Past and Present: Durational, Living Performances…...……………….168 Time Immemorial: Doubling of Past and Present………………..…168 Present and Past Become One: “History becomes present and present becomes history.”…………………………………………..169 Disrupting the Fixed Concepts of “Indian” and “Indian Country”…172 Spaces Disrupted: Performing for Different Audiences………………………..181 Disorienting Colonized Spaces of Disappearance…………………...…184 Illuminating Legal System Injustices for Top Law Schools……………188 Yale……………………………………………………………...…..190 Harvard…………………………………………………………...…193 Critical Consciousness Raising for Reformulating the Law……………………195 CHAPTER FOUR AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL’S MAZE REPORT: POPULAR EDUCATION REPORTING FOR CRITICAL SOVEREIGNTY CONSCIOUSNESS………………197 Introduction………… ………………………………………………………….197 Native Women’s Rights and International Human Rights Law.……………….207 Overview of Inter-American Court of Human Rights....……………….209 Jessica Lenahan’s Story…..…………………………………………….212 Jessica’s Legal Cases………..……………………………………….…214 Jessica Lenahan’s Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Petition………………………………………………………………….218 2011 United Nations Special Rapporteur Visit to the U.S..…………….224 Maze Report: Popular Education Strategy for Teaching Audiences about Restoration of Tribal Sovereignty to Protect Native Women….……………….225 Two Ways of Knowing: Empirical Data and Applied Felt Theory for Generating Shame…………………………...………………………….227 Legacy of Colonization and Human Rights Violations…..………….…232 8 Remedies for U.S. Human Rights Violations in Indian Country: Tribal Nation Jurisdiction Restoration and Allocation of Federal Resources……………………………………………………………….238 Conclusion…………..………………………………………………………….241 CONCLUSION CRITICALLY SOVEREIGN INDIGENOUS FEMINIST PEDAGOGY: DISORIENTING LITERACIES OF DISAPPEARANCE….……………………….…244