Beyond Settler Time: Temporal Sovereignty and Indigenous Self-Determination

What does it mean to say that Native peoples exist in the present? In Beyond Settler Time Mark Rifkin investigates the dangers of seeking to include Indigenous peoples within settler temporal frameworks. Claims that Native peoples should be recognized as coeval with Euro-Americans, Rifkin argues, implicitly treat dominant non-native ideologies and institutions as the basis for defining time itself. How, though, can Native peoples be understood as dynamic and changing while also not assuming that they belong to a present inherently shared with non-natives? Drawing on physics, phenomenology, queer studies, and postcolonial theory, Rifkin develops the concept of "settler time" to address how Native peoples are both consigned to the past and inserted into the present in ways that normalize non-native histories, geographies, and expectations. Through analysis of various kinds of texts, including government documents, film, fiction, and autobiography, he explores how Native experiences of time exceed and defy such settler impositions. In underscoring the existence of multiple temporalities, Rifkin illustrates how time plays a crucial role in Indigenous peoples' expressions of sovereignty and struggles for self-determination.

Table of Contents:
Preface  vii Acknowledgments  xv 1. Indigenous Orientations  1 2. The Silence of Ely S. Parker  49 3. The Duration of the Land  95 4. Ghost Dancing at Century's End  129 Coda. Deferring Juridical Time  179 Notes  193 Bibliography  241 Index  269

About the Author :
Mark Rifkin is Director of the Women's and Gender Studies Program and Professor of English at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro and the author of several books, including Settler Common Sense: Queerness and Everyday Colonialism in the American Renaissance.

Review :
"Rifkin offers the compelling argument that challenging normative settler time engenders new possibilities for Native articulations of futurity." - Stephanie Lumsden (Studies in American Indian Literatures) "Rifkin’s book presents a novel and ambitious perspective in analysing the process of land dispossession and forced assimilation of Native Americans during the consolidation of the U.S. national state in the nineteenth century and its afterlife." - Carolina Aguilera (Ethnic and Racial Studies) "A theoretically robust and intellectually satisfying work that challenges readers to think differently not only about the past, but also about time. . . . A welcome addition to the robust body of interdisciplinary writing that has become renowned for its thick descriptions of space and place. . . . Rifkin’s approach is innovative, his analysis is theoretically sophisticated, the scaffolding upon which his analysis hangs is inspiring, and the vocabulary he advances is both useful and empowering." - Kieth Thor Carlson (American Historical Review) "A quite brilliant work of theory. . . ." - James Mackay (American Literary History) "Rifkin’s work moves us toward a more expansive understanding of the ways in which collective memory, ceremonial practices, prophesy, oral traditions, and place- based knowledges inform Indigenous corpo-realities and shape quotidian experiences of synchronously felt pasts, presents, and futures. This text is a critical addition to Native American studies and should be read by all striving for a decolonial future."   - Sarah Whitt (American Indian Quarterly) "It is impossible in a brief review to do justice to the full richness of Beyond Settler Time. Rifkin is meticulous in positioning his own work in relation to other scholarship, and while at times this forces the reader to work through the extant discourse surrounding a particular novel or text to get at the new interpretive kernel, that work is always rewarding. . . . Beyond Settler Time is a valuable contribution to the field of indigenous studies." - David J. Carlson (Journal of American Studies) "Beyond Settler Time provides a necessary and important intervention in theorizations of time in Native American literature and history. Rifkin presents a set of analytic tools that scholars can employ when engaging Indigenous texts with temporal formations, shedding light upon crucial differences in Native American conceptions of time, place, and becoming." - Penelope Kelsey (Western American Literature)