Audra Simpson

udra Simpson’s Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States (2014) is a masterful anthropological inquiry into the political dimensions of indigenous life on the Kahnawà:ke reserve, which is located on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, near Montreal, Quebec. Drawing on her own ethnographic work, Professor Simpson seeks to inspire new anthropological approaches to Indigenous living that is attentive to their contemporary, ongoing political reality. show more Showing first how past anthropological work has erased the ongoing effect of settler colonialism, and participated in creating a fixed conception of Iroquois culture which erases Iroquois subjectivities, the book refutes those misconceptions by attending to the nested sovereignties and the politics of refusal integral to Kahnawà:ke’s history. show less

I think clearly this is a critical work to think about refusal and how refusal is taken up both by scholars (as in "ethnographic refusal" which ought to be taught waaaaay more often in methods and ethics courses like why don't we talk about that more??) but also as a way of Indigenous politics that is really worth thinking about. I think for NN folks, this is definitely worth thinking about borders and recognition/refusal, and in thinking about what constitutes sovereignty and recognizable show more sovereignty. I will probably be returning to this at some point, because it's such a critical work and some of it was fairly dense, but I do think it has so much to contribute in terms of thinking about mobility and its limits. show less