Louisa Enick, “Hemmed In on All Sides”
Louisa Enick, “Hemmed In on All Sides”
Washington, 1855–1935
This chapter explores the relationship between citizenship status and land ownership by focusing on the case of Louisa Enick in Washington Territory during the period 1855–1935. Louisa Enick raised a family with her husband on Sauk-Suiattle tribal lands in northwestern Washington in the last decade of the nineteenth century, but in 1897 her lands became incorporated as part of the Washington Forest Reserve, today part of the Mount Baker–Snoqualmie National Forest. Over the first half of the twentieth century, Louisa's daughters would petition federal officials to keep their lands in family and then tribal hands, but they fell victim to the web of allotment law as well as bureaucratic incompetence and prejudice. This chapter considers Louisa Enick's story as a testament to Indigenous women's key role in maintaining land-based corporeal sovereignty under “the law of dictators.”
Keywords: citizenship, land ownership, Louisa Enick, Washington Territory, Sauk-Suiattle, Washington Forest Reserve, allotment law, Indigenous women, corporeal sovereignty, tribal lands
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