A Nation Within – LPE Project

Recovering Emergence: A Nation Within What?

James Brandt — Wed, 14 Dec 2022 11:00:00 +0000

In the sci-fi short, The Sixth World, filmmaker Nanobah Becker poses the unthinkable: Diné people on a space mission to colonize Mars. Yet, in Becker’s telling, colonizing Mars is not a linear journey into a post-apocalyptic future, but is instead part of a genre of indigenous futurism and “decolonizing encounters.” Ezra Rosser’s A Nation Within follows a different temporality. Moving from “past to present to future,” Rosser offers a rich history of a Nation that emerges in relation to perhaps the most central, kindred actor for Diné futurism: the land itself.

Tribal Consultation as Right and Obligation

James Brandt — Mon, 12 Dec 2022 11:15:00 +0000

In his prodigious A Nation Within, Ezra Rosser identifies numerous moments throughout Navajo Nation history that would have benefited from more robust consultation. The Diné’s forced march to Bosque Redondo, the arbitrary sheep stock reduction, and harmful strip mining all point to a lack of tribal input and an overabundance of federal paternalism. In the scheme of federal Indian law, however, consultation is a relatively new and underdeveloped framework that fails to reflect the extensive amount of governmental decision-making that impacts Tribal interests.

Good Native Governance for the Seven Generations

James Brandt — Thu, 08 Dec 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Native Nations in the United States are stronger today in many respects than they have been in the past 250 years. Despite much growth, however, tribes continue to experience the instability that comes from the ruptures of colonialism and must work to recover, rebuild, and revive the cultural lifeways that make them who they are as Indigenous Peoples. This presents a significant governance challenge for many Indian nations in the modern world. This struggle is, in many ways, at the heart of Rosser’s provocative deep dive into the remarkable experience of the Navajo Nation in A Nation Within.

A Nation Within: Navajo Land and Economic Development

James Brandt — Tue, 06 Dec 2022 11:00:00 +0000

This post introduces a symposium on Ezra Rosser’s A Nation Within: Navajo Land and Economic Development. Read the rest of the posts here. *** On December 18, 2020, explosive charges brought down Navajo Generating Station’s three massive, 775 foot tall smokestacks. For almost half a century, from when they were built until when they were demolished, the smokestacks had stood as the tallest manmade...

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