Sovereign selves : American Indian autobiography and the law / David J. Carlson.

Sovereign selves : American Indian autobiography and the law / David J. Carlson.

Urbana : University of Illinois Press, 2006.

viii, 217 pages ; 23 cm

This book is an exploration of the surprising impact of American legal systems from the Revolutionary War until the 1920s on Indian autobiographers' approaches to writing about their own lives. Historically, Native American autobiographers have written in the shadow of "Indian law," a nuanced form of natural law discourse with its own set of related institutions and forms (the reservation, the treaty etc.). In Sovereign Selves, David J. Carlson develops a rigorously historicized argument about the relationship between the specific colonial model of "Indian" identity that was developed and disseminated through U.S. legal institutions, and the acts of autobiographical self-definition by the "colonized" Indians expected to fit that model.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 199-209) and index.

KIE1877 .C38 2006

English

9780252072666 (paper ; alkaline paper)
0252072669 (paper ; alkaline paper)