The Transit of Empire - Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism - Grand Format

In The Transit of Empire, Jodi A. Byrd explores how indigeneity functions as transit, a trajectory of movement that serves as precedent within U.S. imperial history. Byrd argues that contemporary U.S. empire expands itself through a transferable "Indianness" that facilitates acquisitions of lands, territories, and resources. Examining an array of literary texts, historical moments, and pending legislations, Byrd demonstrates that inclusion into the multicultural cosmopole does not end colonialism as it is purported to do.
Rather, that inclusion is the very site of the colonization that feeds U.S. empire. Byrd contends that the colonization of American Indian and indigenous nations is the necessary ground from which to reimagine a future not only where the losses of indigenous peoples are visible but where they have agency to transform life on their own lands and on their own terms.