The Ohlone/Costanoan-Esselen Nation of Monterey, California: Dispossession, Federal Neglect, and the Bitter Irony of the Federal Acknowledgment Process
T s article presents a sketch of the Ohlone/Costanoan-Esselen Nation of Monterey County, California, focusing on the making of the tribe's federally unacknowledged status. Consisting of over four hundred fifty enrolled members, the Ohlone/Costanoan-Esselen Nation (hereafter OCEN, Esselen Nation, or Esselen) is currently petitioning to clarify its status as an American Indian tribe through the federal acknowledgment process (FAP) administered by the Branch of Acknowledgment and Research (BAR), Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). A history of junctures between federal action and acknowledgment of this community and instances of governmental neglect fostered the dispossession of tribal lands. I begin by briefly exploring the effects of Spanish colonization and missionization on the initial treatment of this tribal community by the federal government after American occupation. I argue that coastal, missionized Indians were overlooked during a period of treaty making in the 1850s as they were deemed already "domesticated," due in large part to their incorporation into the ~ 41 dominant economic order. I end by discussing the implication of this history for the Esselen Nation's struggle for federal acknowledgment and for the federal acknowledgment process. Simply put, the FAP criteria of sociocultural and political persistence and external recognition do not account for 230 years of state-sponsored violence, crass federal neglect, expropriation, and assimilationist policies.
Ideology, Agency, and the Federal Acknowledgement Process
In June of 2013, the Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs, Kevin Washburn, began holding tribal consultations in an attempt to reform the Federal Acknowledgement Process (FAP) with the input of recognized and unrecognized indigenous peoples. Between June and September of 2013, unacknowledged Californian Indian groups, including the Amah Mustun Tribal Band of Ohlone/Costanoan Indians (Amah Mutsun), the Ohlone/Costanoan Esselen Nation (Esselen), and the Muwekma Ohlone Indian Tribe (Muwekma), submitted separate letters in an attempt to voice their concerns and recommendations. This situation offers a useful case study for anthropologists attempting to study the role of ideology within the context of federal recognition. Using Phil Abrams theorization of the state as a historically determined and processual formation in conjunction with Louis Althusser’s discussion of ideology and Sherry Ortner’s conceptualization of agency, I discursively analyze each comment letter with special attention paid to discourses of history. With this approach, I make three interrelated arguments. First, the FAP is an inherently contradictory ideological project of the state that produces a paradoxical narrative of indigenous history. Second, the historical narratives within these letters reflect an incomplete and contested process of interpellation that seeks to reify state power through the reproduction of hegemonic ideas. Third, these historical discourses reflect the different political strategies of representation that unacknowledged peoples formulate to contest the process of interpellation as they navigate a paradoxical state ideology. Ultimately, these conclusions point towards the incomplete, dialectical, and contested nature of state ideology within the system of federal recognition.
Some Obstacles to Democracy in Quebec
Historically, French Canadians have not really believed in democracy for themselves; and English Canadians have not really wanted it for others. Such are the foundations upon which our two ethnic groups have absurdly pretended to be building democratic forms of government. No wonder the ensuing structure has turned out to be rather flimsy. The purpose of the present essay is to re-examine some of the unstated premises from which much of our political thinking and behaviour is derived, and to suggest that there exists an urgent need for a critical appraisal of democracy in Canada. No amount of inter-group back-slapping or political bonne-ententisme will change the fact that democracy will continue to be thwarted in Canada so long as one-third of the people hardly believe in it—and that because to no small extent the remaining two-thirds provide them with ample grounds for distrusting it.