UC Berkeley

In the broadest sense, the dissertation identifies the "death ethics of war" during Western expansion of the United States, its claims to exceptionalism, and its enduring legacies in Native American contexts historically and today. The logic of Western European expansion in the Americas can be argued to have exemplified the theory the "death ethics of war". I engage Nelson Maldonado-Torres's articulation of the "death ethics of war" to identify the political logics behind the normalization of genocide in western expansion. I argue that its gendered dimensions engendered violence against Native Americans and fostered an anti-"Indian" logic that traversed the historical boundaries of its inception and became embedded in American institutional and social imaginaries. As one of the most enduring legacies of colonialism, anti-"Indianism" was enabled by racial and gendered logics that permeated the laws and discourses of colonial expansion and became part-and-parcel of the Western imaginary largely through popular culture mediums. The resulting compulsory subject formations established the ostensibly natural human difference between "Indians" and Western European civilizations and in doing so negated the humanity of Native Americans while substantiating the incomparable superiority of Western European and "white" settler societies in America. It was a paradigm, I argue, that continues to underpin Western modernity, American social relationships, and ultimately the systemization of differential political justice for Native Americans in the United States.

I centralize the 1864 Sand Creek massacre because it is one of the highest points of state sanctioned anti-"Indian" violence in during Western expansion on record. Because of the inhumane violence exacted by American military personnel who perpetrated the massacre, the Sand Creek massacre most clearly exemplifies how Western expansion was infused with "death ethics" that facilitated epistemological and literal forms of death in the Native American context. In response to the enduring legacies of anti-"Indianism," the activism of Native American women across the U.S. exemplifies the "ethics of revolutionary love". I employ Dr. Patricia Penn Hilden's theory of the "Red Zone," which identifies Native American activism as a political and spatial consciousness. I explore the myriad life-affirming efforts of Native American women activists to combat and ameliorate the negative effects of contemporary anti-"Indianism".