Two thematic manifestations of neotribal capitalism in the United States

Introduction

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how Elizabeth Rata’s (2000) concept of neotribal capitalism can be used to better understand and illuminate the nature and practices of contemporary indigenous governments in the United States. When used properly, this theoretical concept can illuminate the workings of these governments in terms of focusing on the material basis of their policies and positions, as well as understanding the material basis to the ideologies and perspectives that are prevalent among many indigenous people across the United States. The focus of this paper will be on using one of neotribal capitalism’s component parts – neotraditionalist ideology – to understand how neotribal capitalism has altered indigenous political economies in the United States and to understand the deep embeddedness of neotraditionalism in the ideologies and consciousness of indigenous people themselves (and often times in those scholars that study them). This will be done through an examination of two thematic groupings of relevant issues in contemporary indigenous and scholarly discourses, and in contemporary politico-legal movements advocated by and involving neotribal governments. The first of these thematic groupings involves the interconnected and interrelated issues around labor, class consciousness, and unionization within indigenous communities. The second grouping involves the issues of indigenous identity, tribal citizenship, and the politics around the movement for disenrollment (wherein indigenous people have their tribal citizenship stripped from them by their own neotribal government). As should be clear, it is a goal of this article to demonstrate the often overlooked material basis to the issues and politics around these thematic groupings.

In recent years there have been a growing number of valuable critical examinations of and reflections on a broad range of issues involving indigenous governance, economics, and indigenous sociopolitical movements in various forms (e.g. Alfred and Corntassel, 2005; Rose, 2011; Barker and Pickerill, 2012; Kilibarda, 2012; Kuokkanen, 2011a, 2011b). However, few of these have done so from an explicitly Marxist or materialist perspective, due largely to the historic ideological tension between Marxism and indigenism (see Littlefield, 1991, for a rare exception; see Churchill, 1983, and Barsh, 1988, for discussions of why Marxism is not popular in the broad field of Native American Studies; and see Bedford and Cheney, 2013; Perez, 2013; Simon, 2011; Menzies, 2010, for recent discussions of possible reconciliations and futures). However, despite this tension, elements of Marxist thought are useful for understanding the transformations that have occurred in indigenous communities as a result of their incorporation into the global capitalist system. Simon (2011: 6) writes that ‘the expansion of this [capitalist] system alters indigenous communities, creating elite groups and new identities in its wake, with the result of accelerating the entire process of capitalist incorporation’. Marxist emphasis on understanding the machinations of power, especially of the material basis of that power, can be useful for critically examining the contemporary political economy of indigenous peoples. Simon (2011: 9) continues by stating that ‘some Marxist concepts, applied respectfully and wisely … can help us understand indigenous situations in late capitalism’. Likewise, Menzies (2010: 5) adds that ‘it does seem that the analytic reach of Marxist inspired theoretical concepts and frameworks should have some salience for navigating a path toward decolonization autonomy’. Therefore, a Marxist perspective is offered here not necessarily to the exclusion of other schools of thought, but rather could be viewed as supplementing or complementing the deficiencies or ‘blind spots’ of other perspectives.

Rata developed this concept of neotribal capitalism as a critical framework for understanding the social, political, and economic transformations of the indigenous Maori communities in New Zealand wherein she describes the promotion of neotribal capitalism by the emergent tribal elite in brokerage with the government of New Zealand as a rhetorical means of colonial reconciliation, the creation of capitalist economic structures by Maori peoples, class formation and the emergence of a Maori elite, and the workings of neotraditionalist ideology (Rata, 2000, 2003a, 2003b, 2004, 2005, 2011a, 2011b, 2013). This framework has since begun to be applied to understanding similar policies and processes in other settler-colonial states (Schroder, 2003; Rose, 2014). Rata (2000: 33) defines neotribal capitalism clearly as ‘the articulation of exploitative class social relations of production and a neotraditionalist ideology of revived communal relations within a social formation structured by a capitalist regime of accumulation’. She (2000: 33) adds that:

Neotribal capitalism shares the fundamental features of capitalism, such as exploitative class relations, the commodity exchange relation and the accumulation of capital. However, a tribal mode of regulation establishes two specific features that distinguish neotribal capitalism from other versions. Firstly, neotribal capitalism is characterised by the absence of privatized ownership of the means of production. The corporate tribe, rather than the individual, is the legal owner of the lands, waters and knowledge. Economic control of tribal resources is located in the groups who use the resources for commodity production. Secondly, class relations of production are reified as communal social relations within a neotraditionalist ideology.

In terms of applying the neotraditionalist ideology framework to the United States, there is an extensive literature on the role of indigenous governments in contemporary indigenous economics and development in the United States and Canada (e.g. Diochon, 2013; Jorgensen, 2007; Cornell, 2008; Bunten, 2011; Champagne, 2004; Smith, 2000; Anderson, 1999). However, there is little that is critical of the actually-existing processes and practices of indigenous governments and political economies. Instead, most portray indigenous governments as either benevolent or at least neutral when it comes to matters of organizational structure, public and social policy, and policy outcomes. The actions of indigenous governments are often presented as merely the manifestation of the collective will or the genuine self-determination of a given indigenous community. In fact, the ideology behind United States Federal Indian Law and Policy since at least the 1970s is commonly referred to in academic and policy circles as the ‘self-determination period’ (Duthu, 2008). However, this conceptualization of and discourse around ‘self-determination’ obscures the ways in which the political economies of indigenous societies have been transformed by federal policy. Federal policy promoting so-called self-determination strongly favors increasing the Westernization of indigenous societies in the forms of increased statism in various ways (including dramatically increased bureaucracies, professional law enforcement, written legal codes, etc.), the reorganization of indigenous political systems as liberal representative republics, and the embrace of capitalism in various ways (including tribally-owned businesses, the leasing of land and other resources for extraction by outside companies, the creation of tribal so-called ‘right-to-work’ laws, policies that promote the proletarianization of indigenous people, etc.).

This self-determination ethos represents the United States’ version of neotraditionalist ideology. The ideology of self-determination frames the situation as though actually-existing indigenous governments were in fact manifestations of the collective will or of the popular sovereignty of indigenous communities, rather than as the product of federal policy to promote and facilitate the incorporation of indigenous peoples into so-called ‘mainstream’, Western, or capitalist social, political, and economic modalities. In critiquing similar practices in Canada, Alfred and Corntassel (2005: 598) state that ‘far from reflecting any true history or honest reconciliation with the past or present agreements and treaties that form an authentic basis for Indigenous-state relations in the Canadian context, “aboriginalism” is a legal, political and cultural discourse designed to serve an agenda of silent surrender to an inherently unjust relation at the root of the colonial state itself’. The same is true for so-called self-determination in the United States; self-determination as neotraditionalist ideology is a legal, political, and cultural discourse designed to promote the silent surrender to the colonial/capitalist state by presenting the false reality that the United States is now postcolonial, and that indigenous governments are now ideally on equal standing with state governments and the federal government (rather than as merely a neocolonial appendage of the United States federal system). While it is true what Rata (2004: 56) says about neotribal capitalism emerging from ‘local responses to contemporary global conditions’ in the form of a political brokerage between indigenous elites and the federal government, it is also true that (at least in the United States) contemporary self-determination policies cannot be disconnected from and decontextualized from the long history of US Indian law and policy.

The indigenous political mobilizations in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s, in the form of the Red Power movement and organizations like the American Indian Movement as well as local level activism, were themselves part of the general global trend of social upheaval and social change of that period, but they were also direct responses to US Indian policy as it was applied at various times in the 20th century and at various locations (Smith and Warrior, 1996; Cobb and Fowler, 2007). Federal Indian policy during the late 1940s through the 1960s is commonly referred to as the termination period, which saw a return to policy efforts to subordinate indigenous governments to the states, the selective ‘termination’ of indigenous governments which involved the ending of their political and legal standing in the eyes of the US government, and the assimilation of indigenous peoples into mainstream society (Duthu, 2008; Fixico, 1990). These indigenous political mobilizations helped to turn federal policy away from termination and toward so-called self-determination.

However, the self-determination era is itself largely an elaboration on and continuation of the New Deal era policies of the 1930s exemplified by the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. As Schroder (2003) shows, it is in the 1930s with the Indian Reorganization Act where the US version of neotribal capitalism first becomes institutionalized. Schroder (2003: 441) states that ‘while one of the ideas behind the IRA was to curtail the influence of these Indian businessmen and further the retribalization of reservation lands and the return to a more “traditional” Indian way of life based on collectivism and democracy, it ended up giving the tribal councils, and thus the new “traditional” elite, just the power it needed to strengthen their position even further’. Nagata (1987: 63) says as much, wherein ‘the two aims of the act [the IRA] – the promotion of self-government and the protection of traditional cultures – turned out to be not only contradictory, but also disruptive’ to indigenous communities. Likewise, Littlefield (1991) shows that the history of Indian policy in the United States can be explained and viewed through the perspective of the needs of American capitalists, wherein Indian policy and the changes therein function to meet the needs of the dominant factions of the American bourgeoisie of a given historical period. The point here is that while the contemporary version of neotribal capitalism is certainly a localized response to the neoliberal order, it is also a reworking of previous policies of colonization of which the further incorporation of indigenous peoples into capitalism was a fundamental component. In the United States, the roots of neotribal capitalism precede neoliberalism going back to at least the 1930s, and federal Indian policy has always had a materialist dimension to it in promoting the interests of American capitalism. It is in that light where these neotribes could be viewed not simply as appendages of the US federal system but also as neocolonies.

The contemporary version of neotribal capitalism (re)emerged in the United States through a brokerage process between indigenous elites and factions of the two dominant capitalist political parties in the United States (i.e. Democrats and Republicans). Cornell and Kalt (2010: 26) note that since its beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s ‘the era of federal support for tribal self-determination through self-government has enjoyed notable stability’. This is because of what they call the ‘bi-ideology’ or ‘bipartisan’ appeal to both liberals and conservatives which ‘has thus far allowed it to last through multiple changes in party control of the federal government’ (Cornell and Kalt, 2010: 26). They state further that ‘from a liberal perspective, self-determination clearly contains an element of support for human rights and decolonization for Indigenous people’ and that ‘from a conservative perspective, self-determination is manifested in self-sufficiency, reduced dependency on the U.S. federal government, and devolution of formerly federal authorities to local governmental units’ (Cornell and Kalt, 2010: 26). Here we can clearly see that neotribal capitalism and its associated neotraditionalist ideology rose to the level of hegemony in non-indigenous and indigenous political agendas and discourses because it could be readily accommodated by the two dominant parties and incorporated into each of their respective political agendas and narratives within the emergent and subsequent neoliberal order. For those on the far right of the American political spectrum that favor a more hard-line version of neoliberalism, neotribal capitalism delivers in the form of cutting, reducing, and transferring what are understood to be ‘social welfare’ programs. Likewise, for those supposedly closer to the center, neotribal capitalism delivers that same neoliberal agenda but it does so in a way that can be framed and presented in the language of supposed social justice and decolonization. Additionally, the brokerage process is crucial not simply for creating this bipartisan and bi-ideological consensus, but it is crucial also for maintaining this ideological and policy hegemony in the present and possibly into the future, because according to Cornell and Kalt (2010: 26), ‘on its own, the political influence of Native Americans could not plausibly be sufficient to sustain the self-determination framework’. In the following sections, I explore this notion of self-determination as neotraditionalist ideology as it has been developed and infused into these two thematic social and policy groupings, and how this serves to promote the position of neotribal governments as ‘regimes of accumulation’ (Rata, 2000: 36).

Labor, class consciousness and unionization

The past decade or so has seen increased interest in the place that indigenous people have within larger capitalist labor markets (e.g. Abella, 2013; Friedel and Taylor, 2011; Littlefield and Knack, 1996), including an increased interest in the role that indigenous people can have and have had in the labor movement (e.g. Mills and Clarke, 2009; Tourand, 2004). However, of particular relevance to this discussion is David Kamper’s (2010, 2006) ethnographic work examining unionization and labor organizing in the Navajo Nation. Though not expressed in such terms, Kamper’s work is essentially about how Navajo workers – and the unions that have tried to organize them – have navigated, mediated, and synthesized the contradictory (and perhaps dialectical) relationship between their loyalty to and consciousness of their own class interests as workers and as professionals, with their loyalty to their neotribal capitalist government and its supporting neotraditionalist ideology. Within labor issues, this neotraditionalist ideology of self-determination presents itself through the rhetoric of protecting ‘tribal sovereignty’ and indigenous group cohesion from potentially dangerous outside influences and organizations like unions. In essence, the question being asked is: how can indigenous people unionize without threatening neotraditionalist ideology? Labor tension (or class conflict) is inherent to all forms of capitalism and we should expect nothing less than such conflict in the neotribal forms of capitalism. Rata (2003a: 54) acknowledges the role that neotraditionalist ideology has had in undermining the class consciousness of the Maori in New Zealand, when she states that prior to the 1970s ‘large numbers of Maori belonged to the trade union movement’ but that the shift ‘to post-fordist methods of production and distribution reshaped worker consciousness of the social relations of production’. Neotraditionalist ideology was instrumental in this changing of worker consciousness. Rata (2003a: 54) continues by stating that:

Consciousness of social division and exploitation on the basis of class location that had been developed in the trade unions of the late 19th and 20th centuries was reshaped as, firstly, pan-Maori ethnic and indigenous consciousness, and later as the consciousness of tribal identification. According to neotraditionalism, ethnicity and indigeneity are understood to be the essential subjectivity of the late capitalist worker, replacing and concealing class consciousness. To this end, ethnic and tribal consciousness is a mechanism in the depoliticization of the worker. The worker-in-community of late capitalism, as a communal-self, becomes merely one of the productive forces, to be regulated and managed in the non-democratic modes of regulation of neotribal capitalism, rather than an antagonistic protagonist in the political contestation for the rewards of capital accumulation.

Kamper’s case of the Navajo differs somewhat from Rata’s discussion of the Maori, but it also contains many commonalities. Historically, neotribal governments in the United States have been hostile to unionization, and many have attempted to simply ban unionization on reservations. The Navajo are no exception to this. In showing the history of Navajo labor relations, Kamper (2010: 131) says that:

The establishment of the ONLR [Office of Navajo Labor Relations] in the early 1970s was a significant about-face from the late 1950s and early 1960s, when the NNC [Navajo Nation Council] did as much as it could to prevent unionism within the boundaries of the Navajo Nation. In 1958 the council passed a law strictly forbidding unions on the reservation – including hard labor, imprisonment, or expulsion from tribal land for organizers who broke this law. In 1961, when two unions tried to organize mill workers, the Navajo government appealed to the NLRB [National Labor Relations Board] and then the D.C. Circuit Court to try to prevent representation elections and unionization on the reservation. In this landmark case for tribal labor relations, Navajo Nation v. NLRB, the tribe argued that its 1868 treaty allowed it to prohibit any non-Indians from the reservation, including labor unions.

The Navajo government was ultimately unsuccessful in their argument and lost the case. However, ‘nearly fifteen years later, the tribal government established the ONLR to deal fairly with unions’ (Kamper, 2010: 131). Since the formation of the Office of Navajo Labor Relations, the Navajo Nation has easily become one of the most prominent leaders in and examples of the movement for the establishment of labor laws by indigenous governments themselves. One that is of particular relevance for unionization is the Navajo Nation Collective Bargaining Regulation (NNCBR). What can be drawn from this case is the interpretation that in failing to ban unionization on the reservation, the neotribal government took the strategic move of incorporating labor laws into the mode of neotribal capitalist regulation, rather than risk future litigation. The fear of future litigation is that neotribal governments could have their own sovereignty superseded by that of the federal government on labor issues in being made subject to the National Labor Relations Board. The creation of labor laws by indigenous governments should be understood in that context as a preemptive action intended to protect their own regulatory power and authority from that of the federal government. This represents both a political negotiation of the relationships between ‘sovereign’ governments within the federal system of the United States, as well as a political positioning on the part of neotribal governments to ensure the structural integrity of and control over their indigenous society and to ensure their own continued capital accumulation. However, while this movement to adopt labor laws as a means of ensuring the continuation of neotribal governments as regimes of accumulation is growing as more neotribal governments have begun to take the Navajo position, they remain in the minority.

This politico-legal positioning on the part of the Navajo government forms part of what Kamper describes as the ‘pragmatic approach’ that Navajo people have taken to unionization, and I would argue that this pragmatic approach must be viewed within the context of neotraditionalist ideology. This is especially true given that Kamper positions this pragmatic approach in opposition to an ideological approach. He states that ‘Navajo unionism is characterized more by the pragmatism of utilizing unions intermittently for discrete political ends than by the ideological basis that generally comes with social movement unionism’ (Kamper, 2010: 130). Here Kamper states clearly that Navajo unionization is not connected to the broader labor movement on the principles of class solidarity but is instead focused on gaining reforms within the Navajo sociopolitical structure. It is here also where Rata’s (2003a: 54) characterization of the ‘worker-in-community’ becomes particularly relevant. Kamper (2010: 104) adds that Navajo people seek ‘not just to gain conventional workplace protections but also they use unionism to strategically participate in indigenous community-based politics’ and that ‘if it is not directly clear how a union can be instrumental in a given workplace or community political situation, Navajos tend to remain indifferent to unionism’. Here we see that the Navajo workers primarily understand themselves as members of the Navajo community rather than as workers in a class society, and thus they only occasionally use unions to advance what are understood to be community issues (not class issues).

The most prominent example of Navajo unionism that Kamper gives is the ‘Campaign for Union Recognition’ launched by the Laborer’s International Union of North America (LIUNA) in 2001 to ensure the recertification of the union under Navajo labor law. The campaign was brought about by the Navajo government pushing to assume ownership over the operation of the federal Indian Health Service units on the Navajo Reservation. This transition is allowed under a provision within the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975. According to Kamper (2006: 19), ‘one consequence of the takeover was that Navajo Area IHS employees would transition from employment by the federal government to employment by the tribe. Consequently, employees were required to petition again for union recognition under Navajo Nation tribal labor codes’. The employees were previously unionized and were represented by LIUNA when they were federal employees, but now that they were tribal employees they were required to re-organize and be certified under Navajo law. In terms of their strategy, Kamper (2006: 31) says that ‘for LIUNA organizers it was crucial to frame the union as an advocate for Navajo healthcare workers, but not as an inappropriate challenge to tribal sovereignty’, and thus when ‘framed in this way, union representation could be viewed as an expression of Navajo worker self-determination, not as a criticism of the tribal council’s authority to enact tribal sovereignty’. In essence, union organizers had to walk the fine line of being able to both represent the interests of the workers in opposition to the Navajo government as their employer, but not in opposition to Navajo government itself. He adds that ‘ultimately the LIUNA campaign succeeded by persuading workers to support union representation by carefully and strategically engaging workers’ frustration with the tribal government, skepticism of its proposed health care management takeover, and uncertainty about their future working conditions’ (Kamper, 2006: 27). And that ‘the union succeeded most when, in a view propounded by Navajo organizers, they positioned the campaign as a way for rank-and-file tribal members to participate not only in discussions about their working conditions but also about the future of self-determination within the Navajo Nation’ (Kamper, 2006: 34). As can be seen here, the synthesis to the relationship between class interests and neotraditionalist ideology has been to incorporate and mitigate those class interests within the neotribal capitalist mode of regulation. Thus, the solution has been to organize workers in a manner and using a discourse that are not threatening to neotribal capitalist governments themselves as regimes of accumulation.

And briefly, there are two other aspects of Kamper’s work that showcase the power and prevalence of neotribal capitalism and neotraditionalist ideology in labor issues. The first is in the personal story that Kamper uses to begin his book. He recounts his experience in graduate school at UCLA in 1998 when the State of California introduced a referendum on tribal-state gaming compacts. According to Kamper, as the largest unions in the United States representing casino employees, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union (HERE) opposed the referendum known as Proposition 5 because they argued that the gaming compacts did not have adequate protection for workers’ rights. However, Kamper (2010: 2) notes that ‘in contrast, the sentiment in the Department of American Indian Studies, in which I was enrolled, was decidedly in favor of Prop. 5’ and ‘the department became an unofficial campus headquarters for the pro-Prop 5 campaign’. He continues (2010: 2) by saying that:

Despite my involvement in and commitment to the labor movement, I got into many spirited debates with these friends and colleagues, usually provoked by my support for Prop 5. But I did not maintain my stance without internal conflict. I often cringed inside when some of the Native folks who avidly supported Prop 5 marshaled outdated and oversimplified tropes to attack labor’s opposition to the proposition. On more than one occasion, in discussion with friends and classmates from the American Indian studies department, I felt the need to defend the historical necessity and overall objectives of the labor movement. Yet, in the next breath, I took pains to explain that despite my intimate connection to unions and union organizing, I was completely in favor of tribal gaming and tribal sovereignty and the proposition sustaining them in California.

The second aspect is the growth and existence of the union-busting consultant industry that has emerged to influence the labor laws and policies of these neotribal governments, especially since the widespread development of Indian gaming as an industry. Kamper (2010: 207–8) observes the precarious position that neotribal governments are put in when using these consultants and these tactics, saying that:

Anti-union consultants represent some of the worst tendencies of neoliberalism: the idea that liberalizing labor policies is the best way to grow an economy. This attitude can lead to more confrontational labor relations and worsening work conditions for employees. Moreover, when tribal leaders engage in the anti-union tactics offered by these consultants, they play into the argument made by nonindigenous union leaders, U.S. judges, and the general public that tribal enterprises are like any other commercial enterprise. Engaging in union busting puts tribal enterprise in line with many other U.S. and global corporations. In the eyes of courts and the general public, it can undermine tribes’ claims to the unique circumstance of sovereignty, and the importance of this politics of public perception should not be underestimated.

This observation shows the danger of anti-union policies not simply to workers but even to the neotribal governments themselves. Such tactics can risk their image – that neotraditionalist ideology has created – that tribally-owned enterprises are somehow fundamentally different than any other capitalist corporation. It lifts the veil of neotraditionalist ideology to show that truly these are not revived communal relations, and these companies are not more humane, benign, or people-centric than other companies. It shows people that ‘capitalism with a red face’ (Newhouse, 2000) is still capitalism. This perspective also supports the previous interpretation of the motivations behind the actions of the Navajo government (and others) to adopt their own labor codes as a means of protection and preservation of neotribal power and authority. In that sense, it could be seen that the creation of tribal labor codes functions to maintain that ideological veil. By incorporating labor codes into the neotribal regulatory apparatus, these governments are essentially saying that unions can have a place within indigenous communities as long as they do not threaten the integrity of contemporary indigenous societies. It serves to maintain and reify the illusion that neotribal societies are just communities of people working together for a mutually beneficial end, which of course represents the core of neotraditionalist ideology as the myth of revived communal relations. And in that way, it functions as part of the ongoing sociopolitical brokerage process which seeks to continually justify the federal policies that support and enable neotribal capitalism.

Identity, citizenship and disenrollment

The topic of indigenous identity has been a rather popular one in the second half of the 20th century and now into the 21st century as new studies, books, and articles are published every year examining a different angle from a number of disciplines. For one example, race has become an important theme in discussions of indigenous identity, especially where indigeneity intersects with blackness, and there has been an increase in the literature around the social, cultural, and political dimensions of historical and contemporary racial mixture (e.g. Tayac, 2009; Miles and Holland, 2006; Brooks, 2002; Garroutte, 2003, 2001; Sturm, 2002, 1998; Weaver, 2001). These discussions of race are of particular importance to our understanding of the construction of the ideas about community, identity, and culture within neotraditionalism because of the ways in which race intersects with and complicates ideas about the authenticity of the revived indigenous political community. Notions of ‘blood’ (especially blood purity) are pervasive in contemporary indigenous discourses around legitimacy and cultural authenticity. It is common in indigenous discourses to see notions of blood purity conflated with notions of cultural competence and authenticity wherein those indigenous people with a purer pedigree are assumed to be more culturally traditional. Likewise, cultural authenticity itself is articulated in the language of ‘bloodedness’ where even mixed-ancestry persons that perform important traditional roles in society can be discussed as though they were ‘full bloods’. In that way, cultural traditionalism is made the rhetorical equivalent of blood purity (see Sturm, 2002, for further discussion on these points).

In recent decades two political processes have served as the primary battleground for the framing, articulation, and implementation of neotraditionalist conceptions of legitimate and authentic indigeneity. These are recognition and disenrollment. The recognition process occurs at both state and federal levels wherein these governments formally acknowledge the limited sovereignty and political existence of an indigenous group which serves to grant these indigenous governments new status within the legal framework of the United States. Historically, federal recognition was often done in a non-systematic way for those indigenous groups that did not have treaties with the United States. However, in 1978 the federal recognition process was formalized and standardized into an official application-based bureaucratic process within the Bureau of Indian Affairs (Klopotek, 2011). The federal recognition process could be understood in James C. Scott’s (1998) language of ‘legibility’ wherein the federal government constructs and applies standards to evaluate all petitioning ‘tribes’ without regard to the particular histories and contexts of those tribes, or to the inherent flaws of their own constructed criteria (see Klopotek, 2011; Miller, 2004; Field, 1999, 2003, for further discussion of the flaws of the federal recognition process). The process therefore creates artificial clarity and ‘legibility’ where there was perceived ambiguity. The federal recognition process establishes the federal government as the arbiter of indigeneity, and functions to control which ‘tribes’ have access to the political, legal, and material benefits that come with federal recognition. Since approximately the 1970s (though in some locations it is much earlier), many state governments have created their own recognition processes in order to grant limited political and legal status to indigenous groups within their borders. The benefits of federal recognition are certainly greater than those of state recognition, but state recognition can be useful for those that are in the process of petitioning the federal government or who have – for some reason or another – been rejected by the federal process.

As a process, federal recognition should be viewed within the framework of neotribal capitalism, because it is the recognition process that grants indigenous groups access to the neotribal form and to its associated legal privileges. In recent decades, some neotribal governments have spoken out and campaigned against the recognition of tribes by state governments, and some against even the further recognition of tribes through the federal process. Partially because recognition entails increased political and legal status and opportunities for economic development, a common discourse that has emerged is that of the supposed ‘wannabe’ Indians who are creating and joining indigenous heritage groups and calling themselves tribes because they want-to-be Indians so that they can access the perceived wealth that comes from being indigenous. This supposed wealth includes not just casino money, but also the legal privileges that come with recognition such as access to federal programs and grants, access to treaty stipulations and land claims settlements, and access to indigenous intellectual and cultural property. Circe Sturm captures this view in her ethnography on so-called Cherokee ‘racial shifters’, which are people who choose to identify as being Cherokee despite not necessarily having a clearly documentable connection to a recognized tribe. Sturm states that ‘citizen Cherokees’ (people who belong to one of the three federally-recognized Cherokee tribes) believe that the main motivation for these racial shifters claiming Cherokee identity is material. She states that ‘when citizen Cherokees articulate the complex motivations behind race shifting, the first order of explanation is almost always a material one, the idea that poor whites want to be Cherokee for the presumed financial benefits, such as free health care, housing, per capita payments, college scholarships, and hiring preferences’ (Sturm, 2011: 96). Likewise, this belief was maintained even when racial shifters insisted otherwise, with one citizen Cherokee stating that ‘any time they say, “Oh, it’s not about the money!” it usually is. So I don’t care what they tell you. It’s still about money’ (quoted in Sturm, 2011: 97). These views do not simply exist with the citizenry. They are also encouraged and supported by the federally-recognized Cherokee governments. In April 2008, the federally-recognized Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (in North Carolina) passed a joint resolution entitled ‘A Resolution Opposing Fabricated Cherokee “Tribes” and “Indians”’, and in subsequent years have produced a ‘Fraud List’ naming all 212 of these supposedly fabricated tribes. Additionally, in October 2011 the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians established the Cherokee Identity Protection Committee (McKie, 2011). And likewise, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma has produced propaganda films exposing and denouncing these supposedly fabricated tribes (Cherokee Nation, 2009).

For our understanding of the workings of neotribal capitalism, the focus here is not on the veracity or legitimacy of the claims of either side (though that would certainly be a fruitful topic for critical examination). Rather, the purpose is to see how and why the structural access to the neotribal form in the manner of political recognition is so highly contested. There are clear material benefits to each side, and the ‘citizen Cherokees’ as individuals and as governments certainly use the rhetoric of wealth to discredit and denounce the claims of the other. What is often not included in these discussions is the flip side of that very same argument. If the ‘racial shifters’ want recognition (and access to the neotribal form) for the material benefits, then surely the ‘citizen Cherokees’ are arguing for non-recognition for their own material benefit. There are of course many other reasons why ‘citizen Cherokees’ could oppose these other groups and be concerned about the integrity of the indigenous community and of the ownership and production of indigenous culture. However, the point is that materiality is not considered by these ‘citizen Cherokees’ to play a significant role in their conceptualization of their own views and positions, which stands in stark contrast to the primacy that they assign to their conceptualization of the views and beliefs of ‘racial shifters’. The supposed wealth of federal recognition comes not simply through the organizational form of neotribal capitalism, but also through the exclusivity of access to such a form. The arguments made by ‘citizen Cherokees’ and the actions of these recognized Cherokee governments need to be viewed as representative of an ideology that supports the material interests of those neotribes in maintaining exclusivity to Cherokee neotribal capitalist accumulation.

The second political process connected to notions of legitimacy and authenticity is that of disenrollment. Disenrollment occurs when neotribal governments decide to redefine their own citizenship/membership criteria, which results in demonstrably indigenous people being stripped of their citizenship or otherwise being denied citizenship in that neotribal government. Disenrollment as a political process is most common among the tribes that own casinos, though it is not limited to them. While most notorious for occurring among the casino-owning tribes in California such as the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians (ICTMN Staff, 2012), concerns about the purity of tribal membership can be seen even in Eastern tribes like the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians as they try to tighten the implementation of their membership criteria (One Feather Staff Report, 2010). While there is some variation on the particulars of how disenrollment is conducted by a given neotribe based on its own history and social dynamics, the common elements and processes hold true. Often times, disenrollment involves either changes to the degree of blood purity (i.e. blood quantum) that is required for membership or changes to which ancestral line a person needs to prove descent through, and there are many examples of both types. However, one of the few times that disenrollment took a particularly racial manifestation was with the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma’s disenrollment of its Freedmen members. The Cherokee Freedmen are the descendants of slaves owned by Cherokee masters who were made citizens of the Cherokee Nation by treaty in 1866 following the conclusion of the American Civil War. Citizenship in the modern Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma is based on descent from the Dawes Rolls, which recorded and allotted lands to indigenous people living within what is now the state of Oklahoma prior to the dissolution of the Cherokee Nation government and the achievement of Oklahoma statehood in 1907 (Sturm, 1998). The Dawes Rolls made the racial distinction between Cherokee citizens at the time as to whether they were citizens ‘by Blood’ or were ‘Freedmen’. When the Cherokee Nation was reorganized in 1970, the descendants of these Freedmen were allowed to vote in Cherokee elections. Likewise, the Cherokee Constitution of 1976 stated that citizenship was defined by descent from the Dawes Rolls (Sturm, 1998). However, the ideological obsession with ‘blood’ as the basis of Cherokee identity grew in prominence among Cherokee people. Sturm (1998: 241–2) states that ‘this heightened sense of blood as the primary basis of Cherokee National identity began to take hold as early as 1975’. The government of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma has successfully struggled since at least 1983 to formally deny the Freedmen their right to vote and to participate as citizens by trying to limit citizenship to only descendants of those listed on the Dawes Rolls ‘by Blood’ (see Sturm 1998, 2002; Coates, 2013, for further discussion of the Cherokee Freedmen controversy). What is of particular relevance to our understanding of the workings of neotribal capitalism is seeing how the neotraditionalist emphasis on authenticity and ‘bloodedness’ (the fixed racialized definition of the collective self) masks political economy. The rhetoric of neotribal governments on changes in citizenship is that they are merely a redefinition of the collective self as a manifestation of the collective will, rather than possibly being economically motivated to exclude certain populations (e.g. rival families, supposedly undesirable or ‘inauthentic’ members, etc). This exclusion serves the function of consolidating political economic power under the control of a more socially and racially homogeneous tribal elite.

The core commonality between these discussions of recognition and disenrollment is this idea of the need to restrict access to the neotribal form and to the legal privileges that come with it. This restricted access comes in both ways as restricting the number of neotribes that exist, and restricting the number and type of people that are allowed access to a particular neotribal government. The true origins of these ideological and rhetorical obsessions with authenticity, the racialized collective self (understood in the language of ‘blood’), and self-determination, which are all associated with the revived community of neotraditionalism, could be debated endlessly. However intriguing that may be, it would be of little value in itself. What is of importance is understanding that, regardless of their particular origins, these neotraditionalist concepts are now deeply embedded in and cannot be dissociated from the political economy of neotribal capitalism in the United States. They have been adopted and reworked by the neotribes as the ideological and rhetorical means to defend neotribal power and authority. Additionally, consciousness of the material dimension of these values and concepts on the part of individual indigenous persons is not necessary for the existence of the material dimension. This is not to say that discussions of and positions on indigenous identity, recognition, and disenrollment are exclusively materialist in a narrow deterministic sense. Rather, the point is to emphasize that materiality is present in all issues; and that part of the power and function of neotraditionalist ideology is to conceal the materiality behind the contemporary production and use of these concepts as well as remove critical awareness of materiality from discussions of indigenous culture and community.

What is also particularly intriguing in the connection between recognition and disenrollment is that through disenrollment individual indigenous persons are stripped not simply of their citizenship in their former indigenous political entity, but they are also stripped of their indigenous status in the eyes of the federal government. Not only is their citizenship taken from them in a seemingly arbitrary manner (which should signal some serious human rights concerns for scholars and activists interested in the notion of a universal right to citizenship and the actions of governments in the unilateral removal of citizenship for entire segments of the population, all in the name of ‘sovereignty’: imagine the international political fallout if an independent nation-state were to do this), but they are also functionally prohibited from reorganizing themselves and acquiring federal recognition as a separate political entity, though a few individuals might still qualify for some federal programs due to a high degree of blood quantum. I will leave that to other scholars, but I do not know of any cases where disenrollees have successfully established their own political communities. This is fundamentally different than older forms of indigenous political fracturing where splinter groups could be recognized by and enter into relations with outside governments and communities on their own terms after leaving the main group. Under conditions of neotribal capitalism, and the exclusivity required therein, when indigenous political communities fracture the faction in control of the neotribal government is the only one that retains their indigenous status.

Conclusion

The purpose of this article has been to apply Rata’s concept of neotribal capitalism to the indigenous governments of the United States, and in particular, the goal has been to demonstrate the workings of neotraditionalist ideology in the two thematic groupings of labor and identity, focusing especially on the material basis to the positions taken and policies implemented by these neotribal governments which support their existence as regimes of accumulation. Neotraditionalist ideology is dangerous for several reasons, one of which is that it is a significant threat to democracy (see Rata, 2011b, 2005, 2004). It is also dangerous because it promotes the insidious notion that capitalist exploitation (though obviously not articulated in these terms) is wrong only when it is without collaboration with and acceptance by the indigenous community. In this ideology, capitalism is acceptable (if not preferred) when it is indigenous people exploiting the land and each other, or at least providing the legal acquiescence for exploitation by outside firms. Likewise, self-determination as neotraditionalist ideology also performs the function of insulating actually-existing indigenous (neotribal) governments from critique. It generally succeeds in preventing criticism of neotribal governments because instead of addressing the substance of the criticism, such criticisms are reframed as attacks against indigenous people themselves. In the twisted logic that is self-determination as neotraditionalist ideology, a criticism of the workings of neotribal governments in promoting an internalized form of colonialism would be reframed and dismissed as an example of colonialism on the part of the critic, especially if that critic is not indigenous. After all, how could they be new forms of colonialism and exploitation if they are self-determined? And with that, in this ideological framework, to challenge the supposed self-determination of an indigenous government is therefore necessarily to challenge the ability of an indigenous community to make their own decisions. Following that logic, the critic can then be neatly dismissed as an elitist, as a racist, and as a colonialist, all without having to address any of the substance of the criticism itself.

It is noteworthy here that while some criticisms of indigenous governments and indigenous political economies do exist, the more radical critiques in North America are frequently done by indigenous scholars themselves and they are done from a radical indigenist perspective rather than a Marxist one (e.g. Alfred, 1999, 2005). The point here is that the social and political space does not yet exist in a widespread form where non-indigenous persons (even scholars) can critique the policies and question the fundamental legitimacy of neotribal governments, and be taken seriously, without having those labels thrown around. The general silencing of critical non-indigenous voices on indigenous affairs is derived from and representative of the power of neotraditionalist ideology. The strength and insidiousness of neotraditionalist ideology is that it does not concern itself overtly with discourses of power and economy, instead favoring discourses of culture and community which are framed as internal and apolitical. However, as capitalist governments their organizational structures and their policies have significant material consequences for both indigenous and non-indigenous people. For example, focusing on this narrow understanding of sovereignty ignores and obscures the reality that tribal governments utilize and normalize a capitalist mode of production. There is nothing either natural or necessary (or perhaps even ‘sovereign’) about that socioeconomic mode of organization. Instead, if they so desired, tribes could reorganize tribally-owned businesses on cooperative (or other worker-friendly) principles.

In practice, defenses of ‘tribal sovereignty’ are little more than the advocacy for and defense of neotribal power, and function to eliminate not simply criticism of neotribal governments but even discussions of alternatives. The same is true of discussions of identity and citizenship. Emphasis on ‘bloodedness’, authenticity, and a return to ‘traditionalism’ and community as natural and apolitical categories conceals the power and class relations behind them. It hides the functional role of the federal government as the arbiter of indigeneity, rather than having the question of indigeneity and group membership being decided by the people themselves. Likewise, neotraditionalism hides how these concepts are marshaled in support of the consolidation of tribal elite power and the homogenization of the tribal elite themselves. Neotraditionalist ideology is dangerous because it obscures the distinction between tribal governments and indigenous communities in presenting them as functionally equivalent. Lastly, neotraditionalist ideology conceals the fundamental changes that have occurred in indigenous societies and political economies in this era of late capitalism.