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Hopi Tradition as Jurisdiction: On the Potentializing Limits of Hopi Sovereignty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Justin B. Richland
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Abstract

In this article I reconsider Hopi tradition as jurisdiction—reflexive moments of Hopi legal discourse that orient to the limits of Hopi sovereignty, even as they presuppose its power. I explore these themes in two significant moments of Hopi political history. First, I consider the uses of tradition in the creation of the contemporary Hopi tribe through the field notes of the US agent charged with drafting the 1936 Hopi Constitution. Then I consider more contemporary uses of tradition in recent Hopi tribal court cases that extended judicial power over matters reserved for local village leadership. Both instances suggest efforts to potentialize tribal power even as they orient explicitly to the limits of that authority. These traditions are thus, ironically, understood not as replaying Euro‐American logics of nationalist totalities, but as indigenous sociopolitical actions that unsettle static representations of Hopi cultural identity and the sovereignty claimed through them.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , Winter 2011 , pp. 201 - 234
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2011 

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Statutes Cited

Constitution and By‐Laws of the Hopi Tribe, Arizona. 1936. http://www.hopicourts.com/index.php?option=com_docman&Itemid=50&group=13 (accessed October 16, 2010)Google Scholar
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Archival Documents

Oliver La Farge Collection. Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. All documents are unpublished.Google Scholar