The paradox of indigenous sovereignty and American democracy: Discourse of exclusion in Navajo water rights

The water rights to the Colorado River have been under negotiations since at least 1922 when seven western states enacted the Colorado River Compact. These negotiations have had a significant impact on the Navajo people. This dissertation focuses on the negotiations over water rights through an analysis of the ambiguities with regard to Navajo sovereignty, the federal Indian trust relationship, and American liberal democracy. The theoretical framework is grounded in Michel Foucault's discourse theory and supporting ideas from the literature on postmodernism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, and constructivism. The methodology emphasizes Foucault's approach to discern the power struggles inherent in language and knowledge production. These spaces of struggles, however, do not occur in an ahistorical vacuum; rather they are contextualized within a parallel historical evolution of American liberal democracy and Indigenous sovereignty that reinforces the policy paradoxes of the Federal Indian Trust Doctrine and Navajo sovereignty.;The fundamental premise is that the American liberal democratic experiment has not treated Native Americans as equal citizens. This research probes the question of how American democracy has failed to recognize the pre-colonial Native nations as distinct sovereign entities and challenges the Navajos to engage in a more substantive exercise of their sovereignty. The study is a microcosm for analyzing discursive practices associated with water policies and assesses the extent to which Navajo people and their sovereignty were excluded from negotiations over water rights. Despite the negative consequences of their historic struggles, Native people's survival suggests that vibrancy of Native languages is fundamental to the endurance of their sovereignty.