John H. Teeple, Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095. E-mail: sandman@ucla.edu. Colonialism in Kansas: Contesting Territory and Nation on the Potawatomi Reservation.

A close reading of documents relating to land claims, filed by the Prairie Band Potawatomi (now located in Kansas), reveals the significance of a politics of identity and knowledge to the process of nation building. Specifically, just as the United States has historically exerted hegemony on the ground, so too has the government claimed exclusive right to the power of definition. Because of this, the Prairie Band has been unable to define itself, on its own terms, as a sovereign nation. With sovereignty comes a right of territorial jurisdiction, and so by denying their status as a nation, the United States was able to defraud the Prairie Band of land guaranteed to it by treaty. But, recognition of the right to territory can only be achieved with the concomitant recognition of national integrity, the right of self-determination.

Self-determination is bound up in concepts of knowledge and identity. Who may lay claim to valid knowledge, and who has the right to define an identity are crucial questions that a politically relevant, culturally sensitive, and historically accurate Indigenous geography must ask. The answers to such questions inform the material politics of territory, and thus the very foundation of nationhood.

Keyword: Indigenous geography, identity politics, territoriality.