Description
Book SynopsisExplores how American Indian autobiographers' approaches to writing about their own lives have been impacted by American legal systems from the Revolutionary War until the 1920s. This book traces the way that their sustained engagement with colonial legal institutions gradually enabled them to produce a new rhetoric of Indianness.
Trade Review"The book is most engaging. . . . One of the strengths of
Sovereign Selves is its commitment to a complex reading of the history of engagement between colonial power and Native Americans. . . . Because Carlson shows a clear trend toward the kind of rights talk being used by American Indians today, his book has the potential to help Native Americanist scholars rethink the ways in which literary and legal histories intersect."--
Western Historical Quarterly "In this superbly clear-minded and judicious study, Carlson lays out the various networks of historical and legal processes that shape and articulate Indian identities and that resonate today in ongoing struggles for Native sovereignty."--
Great Plains Quarterly "David Carlson's examination of 'sovereign selves' moves examination of the Native-white encounter from the ethnohistoric to the literary, from cultural entity to individual agency. . . . Necessary to understand what has brought us to the contemporary realities of Indian land claims and other persistent conflicts."--
Journal of the Early RepublicTable of ContentsCoverTitleCopyrightContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. The Discourse of Indian Law2. Seneca Politics and the Rhetoric of Engagement3. William Apess and the Constraints of Conversion4. William Apess and Indian Liberalism5. Charles Eastman and the Discourse of Allotment6. Charles Eastman and the Rights of CharacterConclusion: Toward Self-SovereigntyNotesWorks CitedIndexBack cover
