Land, Labor, and Leadership: The Political Economy of Hualapai Community Building, 1910-1940

Jeffrey P. Shepherd, University of Texas at El Paso

Abstract

Increasingly, scholars are exploring the complex interplay between economic change and cultural identity, in which native communities and individuals respond creatively to the challenges post by captialism and wage labor. Utilizing political economy as an interpretive framework, this essay explores the ways Hualapais incorporated changes around them into their worldviews and agendas. In doing so, it moves beyond questions of agency and adapptation, persistence and innovation, to suggest that scholars consider how "incorporation," frequently seen as a unidirectional, not to mention wholly destructive, phenomenon, can in fact me multifaceted and constructive.