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

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.

Geographies of Discretion and the Jurisdictional Imagination

“…The specifics of this diachrony-for example, the duration of the legitimacy of a decision within the hierarchy and the movement of a case along predetermined highways-are built into the structures and affect the nature of power exercised at each site within the wider architecture. 12 Additional meditation on these temporal elements is, of course, essential, as Marianne Valverde (2015) and others have noted (Braverman et al 2014;Richland 2013). Nonetheless, a more detailed accounting is beyond the scope of this article.…”

“…This approach intersects with a growing literature on the technical dimensions of law (Riles 2005) and the pragmatics of jurisdiction, which has been inspired in part by a disenchantment with metaphysical approaches to sovereignty exemplified by a resurgent interest in the writings of Carl Schmitt (1985Schmitt ( , 1996 and Giorgio Agamben (1998Agamben ( , 2005 over the past decade and a half (Cormack 2007, 7;Maurer 2013;Richland 2013). 2 In anthropology, this jurisdictional turn away from political ontology has been best represented by the work of Justin Richland (2011Richland ( , 2013.…”

“…This approach intersects with a growing literature on the technical dimensions of law (Riles ) and the pragmatics of jurisdiction, which has been inspired in part by a disenchantment with metaphysical approaches to sovereignty exemplified by a resurgent interest in the writings of Carl Schmitt (, ) and Giorgio Agamben (, ) over the past decade and a half (Cormack , 7; Maurer ; Richland ) . In anthropology, this jurisdictional turn away from political ontology has been best represented by the work of Justin Richland (, ). Following in the footsteps of legal and literary scholars like Marianne Constable (), Shaunnagh Dorsett (), Shaun McVeigh (), Bradin Cormack (), and Richard Ford (), among others, Richland has emphasized the importance of “understanding sovereignty as an active undertaking” expressed within the “quotidian matters of everyday legal texts, discourses, and practices” (, 213–14).…”

The Politics of Jurisdiction

“…Although sovereignty and jurisdiction cover much of the same terrain, Justin Richland suggests that jurisdiction locates questions about state power in quotidian legal practice while sovereignty locates them in political theology. In this section, attention to the original expression of jurisdiction reveals that it is closely bound to sovereignty in a number of complicated ways. In light of their relationship, it makes sense to start with sovereignty and then to locate the inaugural roots of jurisdiction.…”

Colonial Traditions, Co‐optations, and Mi'kmaq Legal Consciousness

“…30 30 This is in contrast to the expressions of indigenous sovereignty in Justin Richland's (2011, in this symposium) work in which he uses examples from the Hopi tribe and its legal system to suggest how their conceptualization and practices of sovereignty might repose on a deeply autochthonous understanding of Hopi tradition. …”