A Pluralistic Approach to Oppression and Latino Terra Nullius

This paper contains the substance of a talk that I gave at LatCrit XII in Miami, Florida on Panel C4: Coalition Building, Globally and Locally. It is an outgrowth of my observation of the relative lack of participation by indigenous peoples from the Americas, particularly from the South, within LatCrit itself. It draws on my lived experiences at LatCrit's South-North Exchange on Theory, Culture, and Law in San Juan, Puerto Rico in May of 2005 (SNX 2005) as well as the comments of my hotel roommate, June McCue at the University of British Columbia law school in Canada. The topic of that South-North Exchange was "The Americas and their Indigenous People: Assessing the International Decade of the World's Indigenous people (from 1994-2004)." Professor McCue aptly summed up the SNX 2005 conference well in one phrase - "latino terra nullius." My purpose at LatCrit XII in Miami was to draw on these experiences as well as the theory of Chela Sandoval' to achieve praxis with respect to the participation of indigenous peoples within LatCrit. Because my reflections are intimately connected to my personal background, I begin with a brief synopsis of who I am. I am a forty-eight year old law professor of Eastern Cherokee and African American ancestry' who has long engaged in work on issues involving indigenous peoples. I have also done some work on red/black relationships. I am a former Tribal Attorney for the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes in Fort Hall, Idaho. I have also made several trips to Geneva to observe the workings of the United Nations' Working Group on Indigenous Populations and two trips to New York City as an observer of the Permanent Forum on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Although my family is originally from the Tennessee area, as someone born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, my views are also colored by the urban experience. LatCrit has long used a variety of theoretical methodologies - including doctrinal deconstruction, policy-based political analysis of current affairs, personal narratives, and social psychology -to effectuate its goals. There has also been ongoing discussion about the relationship between LatCrit and others in the critical jurisprudential movement dating from at least LatCrit Ill. Most of these relationship questions revolve around Critical Race Theory, most notably as it and LatCrit itself relate to the Black experience. The participation of indigenous peoples within LatCrit has been sporadic and miniscule at best. Those individuals who identify as being of indigenous origin" who have participated in LatCrit have been primarily, if not exclusively, from the North in spite of the fact that the largest indigenous populations of the Americas are in the South. This is so in spite of the fact that there are also numerous indigenous intellectuals from the South.'2 Even LatCrit XII reflected the difficulty that elites from the South have in placing their 'locus of enunciation' beyond mestizo-criollo consciousness." My paper attempts to address this dichotomy by incorporating personal narrative with some of the alternative modes of criticism that Sandoval has developed with the express purpose of fostering "the end of academic apartheid." To that end, she has devised methods through which one can "listen to and participate in conversations heretofore largely inaudible across the borders of subjectivity." It is Sandoval's fourth tactic, that of "cyber-love" or the "hermeneutic of love," which is the primary thrust of this paper. Getting to praxis requires applying that cyberlove to the indigenous peoples who are so noticeably absent from LatCrit. To put things in better context, however, I must begin with a personal narrative. Innocent Brown Faces Innocent brown faces smile you can. The white world awaits you. The time is at hand. At five you enter those structures, their design, while dads and moms stay muted behind. We weep for you. We hope for you. Indeed we pray for you. But on the day you enter, on that first fateful day, seals your destiny. Our substance flows away.

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