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Seeing Red: Settler Colonialism and the Construction of the “Indian Problem” in United States Federal Indian Law and Policy

Serrott, Kyle Douglas
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1618249252083926

Abstract Details

2021, Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, Political Science (Arts and Sciences).
This thesis examines the “Indian problem” throughout successive eras of federal Indian law and policy, beginning with the pre-constitutional era and continuing through the allotment and assimilation era. Using an interdisciplinary theoretical framework, I attempt to deploy concepts from several bodies of literature in an effort to demonstrate the relationality of systems of oppression that are present in settler societies such as the United States. I hope to show that settler colonialism is not a single system of domination and dispossession, but rather comprises multiple systems of power, including capitalism, orientalism, and white supremacy. Thus, this thesis is a broad project of intersectionality that analyses simultaneously along lines of race, settler colonialism, and capitalism. My interdisciplinary theoretical approach also attempts to draw together theories of relational formations of race, settler colonialism, and racial capitalism to understand how the “Indian problem” is produced, maintained, and regenerated throughout the epochs of Indian law and policy that I examine. I argue that the “Indian problem” is produced through a knowledge production that rationalizes native dispossession in service of the interests of the United States and its white settlers. Here, I draw on Edward Said’s post-colonial theory of orientalism and situate it within the context of settler colonialism to demonstrate how such knowledge produces the “Indian problem” and informs the various policy, military, legal, and religious “solutions” to the “problem” that the United States enacts. I conclude that the “Indian problem” will never be “solved” because it is not a real problem. Rather, the “Indian problem” and its various “solutions” are constructed at historical and contemporary moments in furtherance of U.S. governmental interests, and in service to whiteness, at any particular period. This is what constitutes the ongoing-ness of settler colonialism and dispossession in the United States  
DeLysa Burnier (Committee Chair)
Jennifer Fredette (Committee Member)
Kirstine Taylor (Committee Member)
196 p.
History; Law; Native American Studies
settler-colonialism; federal Indian law; orientalism; assimilation; marshall-trilogy; indian law; racial formation; relational formation; relational formation of race; constitutionalism;

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Serrott, K. D. (2021). Seeing Red: Settler Colonialism and the Construction of the “Indian Problem” in United States Federal Indian Law and Policy [Master's thesis, Ohio University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1618249252083926

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Serrott, Kyle. Seeing Red: Settler Colonialism and the Construction of the “Indian Problem” in United States Federal Indian Law and Policy. 2021. Ohio University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1618249252083926.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Serrott, Kyle. "Seeing Red: Settler Colonialism and the Construction of the “Indian Problem” in United States Federal Indian Law and Policy." Master's thesis, Ohio University, 2021. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1618249252083926

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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This open access ETD is published by Ohio University and OhioLINK.