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The Bodies Belong to No One: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Men in Literature and Law, 1934-2010

Anderson, Joshua Tyler, Anderson
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1531047437469823

Abstract Details

2018, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, English.
In “The Bodies Belong to No One,” I contend that the legal concept corpus nullius in bonis, which restricts the property and personhood rights of the dead, has broader implications in the intersections between twentieth and twenty-first century Native American literatures and federal Indian policy. Specifically, I argue that the literal and legislative acts of violence against Indigenous men in the U.S. from 1934 to 2010 intersect with broader geopolitical acts of Indigenous displacement and dispossession. These interconnected processes rely on what I call “settler hermeneutics,” or the literary and policymaking strategies that seek to affirm settler rights to occupation by setting term limits on “authentic” Indigenous manhood and the scripting of Native masculinities into destinies of cultural death and political dispossession. Set between the Osage Oil murders in the 1920s, which became the FBI’s first major crimes case, and the Tribal Law and Order Act (2010), my work explores how Native American authors re-construct the literary, political, and legal histories of violence in pursuit of Indigenous forms of justice. Developing “subsurface” methodologies, I argue that Native writers offer strategies for reconnecting the juridical surfaces in contemporary Indian Country to much deeper histories of violence in novels that unsettle the settler narratives of progress and belonging. Specifically, I argue that these Native writers reconstruct a much deeper history of missing and murdered Indigenous men, which intersects with the historical and ongoing violence against Indigenous women and Two Spirit peoples across gendered, geopolitical, and generational lines.
Chadwick Allen, Ph.D. (Advisor)
Joe Ponce, Ph.D. (Committee Co-Chair)
Brian McHale, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Debra Moddelmog, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
315 p.
American Literature; American Studies; Film Studies; Gender Studies; Legal Studies; Native American Studies
Native American literature; federal Indian policy; missing and murdered Indigenous peoples; subsurface sovereignties; NAGPRA; Tribal Law and Order Act; Osage Oil Murders; Repatriation; Hollywood Indian

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Anderson, Anderson, J. T. (2018). The Bodies Belong to No One: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Men in Literature and Law, 1934-2010 [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1531047437469823

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Anderson, Anderson, Joshua. The Bodies Belong to No One: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Men in Literature and Law, 1934-2010. 2018. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1531047437469823.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Anderson, Anderson, Joshua. "The Bodies Belong to No One: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Men in Literature and Law, 1934-2010." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1531047437469823

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1531047437469823
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.