Unsettling evidence: an anticolonial archival approach/reproach to Federal Recognition

Abstract

Land Introductions I conducted most of the research for this dissertation in what is currently considered Los Angeles, California, the territory of the Tongva people, the traditional land caretakers of Tovaangar (Los Angeles basin, So. Channel Islands) and in one of the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians' ancestral villages, located in what is now known as the San Fernando Valley, California. Research was also conducted in Chumash ancestral territory, in what is now considered Santa Barbara, California and in the territory of the Kitanemuk/Tejon Tribe in what is now considered Kern County, California. I wrote this dissertation while living in Topanga --where the mountains meet the sea in the Tongva language --which is territory claimed by Tongva, Chumash and Fernandeño Tataviam groups. This means that I live on unceded land that was stolen from at least one of the very same tribes with which I work. As a non-Native student pursuing a doctoral degree in a land grant institution located on Indian land, I thank and pay my respects to the Ancestors, Elders, and Relatives/Relations of these Indigenous communities, past, present and emerging and recognize their continuing connection to land, water, and resources. Author positionalityOriginally from Chile, and as a social justice archivist and scholar, I have dedicated my work -both in and outside academia --to investigating how archives can be accessed, appropriated and used by Indigenous peoples as tools to support self-determination, cultural revitalization, language rights, and political sovereignty. Aware of my privilege as a non-Native, white-passing, Latinx woman and mother, living and studying on unceded Tongva, Chumash and Tataviam Land, my work has prioritized assisting efforts to return Land and resources to tribal communities, specifically through anticolonial archival praxis. My relationship with the xi Fernandeño Tataviam Tribe started in 2017. The Fernandeño Tataviam are non-federally recognized Tribe with ancestral villages located in the San Fernando, Santa Clarita, eastern Simi and Antelope Valleys. The Tribe is petitioning for federal recognition through the U.S. Federal Acknowledgement Process (FAP) since the mid-nineties. In May of 2017, and as a student of the "Locating Records as Evidence for Human Rights" class taught by Professor Anne Gilliland, I interviewed Tribal President Rudy Ortega Jr. for the first time for my final term paper. At the end of our meeting, I manifested to him my interest in assisting the Tribe with their federal recognition petition. Mr. Ortega invited me to collaborate with the research team by reading the petition documents along with the thousands of records used and submitted by the Tribe as evidence in support of their claim, inviting me to think of new locations where to find additional evidence for their case, and exploring alternative ways of interpreting the records that have been considered insufficient evidence by the Office of Federal Acknowledgment, the entity within the Department of the Interior resp...

Rights in and to records and recordkeeping: Fighting bureaucratic violence through a human rights-centered approach to the creation, management and dissemination of documentation

“…Accessing the records that are required as evidence for their petitions is not an easy endeavor for tribal communities due to distance, financial resources, and the academic qualifications that most institutions require of potential researchers in their archives, as well as a frequent lack of adequate finding aids for those materials (Den Ouden & O'Brien, 2013;Montenegro, 2019;Rivard, 2015). The archival profession could lobby repositories that have restricted and elitist access policies to proactively assist tribes to work with relevant records they hold through specialized reference assistance and even developing alternate finding aids to key materials as was recommended by the Bringing Them Home Report.…”

“…Based on my ongoing research addressing the documentation requirements placed upon tribes petitioning for federal acknowledgement in the US (Montenegro, 2019) the policy through which the federal government 'legally recognizes' the sovereign and separate political status of tribal nations -I argue that the Federal Acknowledgement Process (FAP) fails to recognize some of the key rights articulated in the UNDRIP (of which the US is a signatory). These rights are: Indigenous peoples' right to self-determination; their right to the recognition, observance and enforcement of treaties; their right to self-governance/sovereignty and to freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development; their right to determine their own identity or membership in accordance with their customs and traditions; their right to protect their cultural practices; and their right to land ownership.…”