Please join us for the Legal History Workshop with Jess Arnett, Ph.D.
Candidate in History, "Sui Generis: William Paul, Sr. and the Limits of
Settler Imperial Law" (paper attached)
Abstract: This chapter examines how Tlingit lawyer William Paul Sr. leveraged
important tensions in the relationship of Alaska Natives to the federal
government in his pursuit of the 1935 Tlingit and Haida Jurisdictional Act and
the 1936 Amendments to the Indian Reorganization Act. Paul simultaneously
aligned the legal status of Alaska Natives with that of American Indian tribes
of the contiguous states while maintaining strategic distinctions that
heretofore had been wielded by territorial and federal officials in the
disavowal of Alaska Native collective sovereignty. Turning these distinctions
on their head, Paul exploited important vulnerabilities in the developing
settler imperial legal framework in Alaska, creating new spaces from which
Alaska Natives could make claims to land and exercise sovereignty.
Date: Friday, March 3
Time: 9:00-10:30 am
Place: 1024 Heller Hall
Link to Paper
