At the Blog
This week, we closed out our symposium on Ezra Rosser’s A Nation Within: Navajo Land and Economic Development.
On Monday, Lauren van Schilfgaarde discussed the importance of tribal consultation, as well as the reasons that modern Tribal governments struggle to reflect the views of their members. As she writes, “The premise of Tribal consultation implies a centralized Tribal unit with which to consult. It presumes a consulting entity that is capable of speaking with one voice on behalf of the government, and in many instances, on behalf of the Tribal people. The ‘Tribe’ of course, is not always capable of this…. While many Tribal peoples may have cultural, linguistic, and even kinship connections, many lack a centralized leader or government with anything equivalent to European assertions of control. Moreover, numerous Tribal groups were forcibly consolidated into missions, forts, and reservations, often enslaved or as prisoners of war with no freedom to leave. Yet, these missions, forts, and reservations have subsequently been recognized as ‘Tribes’…. The extent, then, that a modern, centralized Tribal government can represent the needs of its community depends greatly on the flexibility of the Tribal government to simultaneously navigate its cultural mismatch, its internal Tribal needs, and external pressures.”
And on Wednesday, Dana Powell reflected on the relationship between environmental protection and indigenous sovereignty. As she writes, “The current planetary crisis is, at the same time, a crisis of recognition of the political difference of polities that predate settler states. Environmental justice that centers nationhood and tribal sovereignty makes the terra legible as homelandscapes, even as ecological ruin and loss might appear to define those places; pursuing ‘energy justice’ as an exertion of nationhood within and against the settler state in this sense, as the Navajo Nation has done from at least former Chairman Peter MacDonald onward, does not guarantee a specific, ‘green’ technology so much as it engenders a political theory of ‘collective continuance’ as rightful response to planetary crisis.”
In LPE Land
There is a hot new issue of the JLPE, featuring articles by Margaret Somers, Sarah Klammer, Kate Bedford, Elizabeth Middleton, Steven Gayle, Zoe Adams and David Birchall.
Melinda Cooper has a piece in the Baffler on the rise of the family office and the resurgence of dynastic wealth in America, with perhaps the best title of the year: In This House We Prey.
A CFP for the ages: Money as a Democratic Medium 2.0. The conference is June 15-17, hosted jointly in Cambridge, MA and Hamburg, Germany. Proposals due by Feb. 1.
Over at Death Panel, the brain trust behind our hit fall symposium on Marta Russell reconnect, as Bea and Phil speak with Karen Tani about an under-scrutinized case on the Supreme Court’s docket this term, Health and Hospital Corp v. Talevski.
And if you’re looking for a “sick pape,” Luke Herrine has posted a draft on SSRN that explores the conceptual relationship between antitrust and consumer protection.
