Necropolitics, Indigenous Sovereignty, and Posthuman Ethics in Louise Erdrich’s The Night Watchman

Abstract

Native American history is marked by a systematic displacement of Indigenous communities from their ancestral lands over centuries due to colonial expansion and government policies. This research examines how the United States government’s 1950s termination policies specifically House Concurrent Resolution 108 functions as a necropolitical mechanism that threatens the legal status of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in The Night Watchman (2020) by Louise Erdrich that tends to strip Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa off their legal status, identity and land to render them legally obsolete. This research analyzes “how the government uses terms such as ‘freedom’ and ‘advancement to erase Native Indians administratively without using any weapons. Drawing on Rosi Braidotti’s theory of Critical Posthumanism this research contends that the Chippewa community’s resistance, survival is rooted in a relational ontology and posthuman affirmative zoe-centered ethics. Through characters’ deep interconnectedness with the non-human world this research shows that they survive by becoming a part of a vitalist continuum and by becoming imperceptible to the state’s necropolitical mechanisms.