UCLA

This critical archival studies dissertation investigates the political, socio cultural, and affective dimensions of the role(s) that settler-colonial archives and conceptualizations of evidence play in the Federal Acknowledgement Process (FAP). Through an archival ethnography of the Fernande�o Tataviam Band of Mission Indians’ petitioning process for federal recognition, I examine how power and oppression are played out intertextually across the different types of records that serve as ‘official’ evidence for federal recognition purposes and within the institutions where these records are held; the competing ideologies and epistemologies that govern interpretations of evidence, who dictates them, and how have they been applied and misapplied to shape the FAP and its decisions; and the effects and affective consequences that result from having to prove Indian identity relying predominantly on settler-colonial evidence, rather than tribal documentary realities. Drawing on the tribe’s petition, documents generated by the Office of Federal Acknowledgement (OFA), and a selection of the evidence used by theTribe, I identify the tensions and contradictions between what is recognized as legitimate evidence of Indian identity by the Tataviam and the OFA respectively, seeking to expose some of the most problematic aspects of the FAP’s evidentiary practices. I make the case that alternative conceptions of evidence are sorely needed that shift the emphasis away from western legal and bureaucratic paradigms towards tribal and anticolonial constructions of evidence. Finally, I consider how such an epistemological and practical shift might serve as a model and possibly a catalyst for a broader and more unified anticolonial efforts by and across those who create, hold and manage tribal evidence.