Student Work
Trail of Hope for Indian Housing, NAIHC, 2013
Are You Farming? NARA, 1929
Floor Plan No. 1, NARA, 1925
John Willis, BRBML, 2007
John Willis, BRBML, 2007
Log Housing Analysis, Notebook 3, 2014
1∕6
Title
Housing Power on Pine Ridge Reservation
Project Description
This thesis examines housing on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. By foregrounding housing, I emphasize the enduring effects of space in reservation politics. In this framework, politics becomes legible through the space it creates, and as such, I argue that housing registers political activity between the Oglala Sioux Tribe and the United States government. Guiding my investigation are three core questions. Why is reservation space different from nonreservation space? What are these differences? How did they develop? Archives, interviews, and government publications comprise the evidence for my research. In the interpretation of this evidence, I draw on theories of settler colonialism from Patrick Wolfe and Lorenzo Veracini; power from Michel Foucault, Bruno Latour, and James C. Scott; space from Keller Easterling and Eyal Weizman; and, historical agency from Ned Blackhawk and Andrew Needham. The organization of this thesis reflects the material properties and spatial composition of housing on Pine Ridge. The three core chapters describe developments in log, frame, and trailer housing. With this organizational strategy, I highlight the differential effects of housing according to its spatial configuration and material composition. These properties map loosely onto the chronology of reservation development, which enables a historical narrative that privileges space, rather than time, as its central protagonist. By exploring the interaction of land and housing, this thesis seeks to describe the imbrication of space and politics. In analyzing this imbrication, I argue that political struggles occur in and through reservation housing; in particular, I contend that the specific materiality of housing enables a prescribed range of activity while disabling an alternative range. Thus, I contend that housing power registers the shifting interests of political encounters on Pine Ridge.