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“What Are You Going to Do with the Village's Knowledge?” Talking Tradition, Talking Law in Hopi Tribal Court

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Justin B. Richland
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Abstract

Though the details of face-to-face talk and interaction have been studied in Anglo American and British courtrooms, few attempts have been made to extend similar analyses to the study of contemporary indigenous and (post)colonial legal institutions that continue to employ legal processes informed by both Anglo-style adversarial notions of law and “local” notions of law, culture, and tradition. Using methods of legal discourse analysis and language ideology studies, this article investigates how interlocutors in a hearing before the courts of the Hopi Indian Nation construct discourses of tradition and Anglo American jurisprudence in multiple and competing ways, and for significant sociopolitical effect. An argument is thus made for attending to the microdetails of sociolegal interactions as an important site for exploring the complex articulations between the contemporary lives of indigenous peoples and the laws with which they are imbricated.

Type
Articles of General Interest
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , June 2005 , pp. 235 - 271
Copyright
© 2005 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

The research and preparation of this manuscript was undertaken with support from a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and a UCLA Institute of American Cultures Predoctoral Research Grant. I would like to thank Paul V. Kroskrity, Alessandro Duranti, and Sally Merry for their helpful comments and critiques of earlier versions of this article. Of course, all remaining errors are mine alone. I would also like to thank members of the Hopi Tribe and the Hopi Tribal Court, who wish to remain nameless, for their hospitality and graciousness during my periods of research on the Hopi Reservation. I am honored by their friendship and collegiality.

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