Description
Choctaw Nation is a story of tribal nation building in the modern era. Valerie Lambert treats nation-building projects as nothing new to the Choctaws of southeastern Oklahoma| who have responded to a number of hard-hitting assaults on Choctaw sovereignty and nationhood by rebuilding their tribal nation. Drawing on field research| oral histories| and archival sources| Lambert explores the struggles and triumphs of a tribe building a new government and launching an ambitious program of economic development in the late twentieth century| achieving a partial restoration of the tribe’s former glory as a significant political and economic presence in what is now the United States. An enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation who was reared in Oklahoma| Lambert describes in vivid detail what this nation building has meant for the Choctaw people and for non-Indians. Choctaw nation building has strengthened the tribe’s ongoing efforts to defend their sovereignty and protect their rights to land| water| and other natural resources. It has also helped produce new ways of imagining| constructing| and expressing Choctaw identity. Yet| as Choctaw Nation also shows| Choctaw sovereignty-the bedrock of Choctaw empowerment-remains under threat| as tribal sovereignty is not only a bundle of inherent rights but also an ongoing| complex consequence of Native initiatives and negotiations on local| state| and national levels. In addition to wrestling with the topics of sovereignty| identity| tribal nationalism| and contemporary tribal governance| this book gives considerable ethnographic attention to tribal elections| non-Indians| urban Indians| economic development| and tribal water rights. Valerie Lambert is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and President-elect of the Association of Indigenous Anthropologists.
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