Contesting Space and Place at the Crossroads of Hualapai History and American Colonization

This paper uses the spatio-historical experiences of the Hualapai to highlight how various conceptualizations of land serve as key sites in the ongoing processes of colonialism and resistance in the Americas.  It looks at Hualapai history to discuss how Indigenous peoples have defined themselves in relation to land, space, and place.  The paper argues that an Indigenous view of “history,” bolstered by oral traditions and Native memories, challenged the meta-narrative of Manifest Destiny used to justify conquest of “the West.”  Part of this resistance involved the stories told by elders about Native geographies to help the tribe reinscribe itself onto the cultural landscape of the region.  Hualapais also employed their “spatial identity” to struggle for justice and clearly demarcate the boundaries and borders between themselves and non-Indian “others.”  They countered colonization of their land by “re-indigenizing” it and in turn, recapturing their history and remembering their past to create what some scholars have termed “Native space.” Several turning points in Hualapai history illustrate how land served as (and continues to serve as) a literal and metaphorical site of contestation over colonization and decolonization.   Battles over the birth of the reservation in the late 19^th century; struggles for water from the Colorado River; resistance to uranium mining; and confrontations with state and federal government over aboriginal occupancy stand as flashpoints in the tribe’s attempt to remain grounded in their homelands.  These struggles represent a fusion of Native “tradition” and the (post)modern project of Indigenous nation building that characterizes the ironies and paradoxes of countering colonialism in the “the land of the free.”