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Concepts Of Authority In Mohawk Interruptus By Audra Simpson

Decent Essays

Authority is important for any leader or government, because that is how decisions are accepted as right. Sovereignty is the recognition by other states that one government has the authority to control a certain territory. As well as the acceptance of rule by the people One major reading that contests this idea of sovereignty is the book Mohawk Interruptus by Audra Simpson, which discusses the trials of Native American populations and their efforts to reclaim their own sovereignty. Within Mohawk Interruptus, the people of the Kahnawá:ke tribe struggle against the colonial idea of American or Canadian sovereignty lorded over them, and through refusal of such “gifts” regain their sovereignty. “… Kahnawa’kehró:non had refused the authority of the state at almost every turn and in so doing reinstated a different political authority” (Simpson, 2014, 106). Through these rejections, the people of Kahnawá:ke and Kahnawa’kehró:non established that the current system of sovereignty does not work for them, as it is colonially based to oppress the Native American communities. Simpson uses these examples to make a larger point on the Western systems of governance and understandings of authority. Though this idea of sovereignty, Simpson argues, was a way to appropriate land and incorporate or destroy opposing cultures. Through the research of Hannah Ardent, it is considered that sovereignty has been used to forcefully assimilate minority populations of nations. Within her paper on the

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