Audra Simpson’s Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States emerged over a decade ago, yet its poignance and relevance to issues of indigenous sovereignty and governance persist today. With a background in political anthropology, Simpson thinks about affective governance in the Mohawk nation across the U.S. and Canada, particularly in the dynamics between Iroquoia and Kahnawà:ke. She uses this book to challenge anthropological methods by centering indigenous self-determination and refusal, and exploring an interwoven fabric of sovereignties, narratives, and histories in order to question what it means to hold membership within an indigenous nation.
Simpson grapples with several recurring questions throughout this book, including how complex personal narratives could possibly align within one comprehensive history or literary canon, and how ethnographic methods can challenge “tradition” and the notion of desire when centered on indigenous cultures. She also explores how to illustrate the complex histories and sovereignty of Kahnawà:ke in relation to other nations, races, and legal orders—including the Indian Act and the Jay Treaty—as a Mohawk herself.
Interweaving field survey interviews, literary and film analysis, historical narratives, often with her own personal reflections, the reader is guided on a journey that completely disrupts the dominating singular narratives on indigenous nation formations. The book absolutely provides an insightful archive of knowledge, constructed as a rich ethnography, yet it also has a meta function in exercising refusal itself—an experimental aspect that really connects Simpson to her subject and puts her data collection into practice.
The book was structured as six chapters, plus a conclusion, each centered on a different theme that acted as mini case studies into particular aspects of Kahnawà:ke nation construction and membership. As Simpson weaves together different methodologies across her thematic timeline, she naturally introduces a progressive series of arguments and questions across each chapter and organizes them through subheadings—of which she is careful to reflect upon and connect across chapters. She will often provide teasers into what the following chapter holds, and is conscious about referencing previous questions she posed in earlier sections, to craft flowing through lines that ebb and flow at appropriate points.
“Ethnographic Refusal: Anthropological Need” was the standout chapter of this book, as it bridged the histories that Simpson detailed in the previous three sections with the impacts of refusal on representations of sovereignty and nationhood. I especially enjoyed the survey interview she included here, in which Simpson understood in real time that she was experiencing a moment of ethnographic refusal with her interviewee. This chapter also revealed the overarching function of the book as an ethnography that pivots upon refusal, which provided a newfound perspective on the content that Simpson may have chosen to withhold throughout the book, and what the people she connected with chose to withhold from her.
Simpson is also very clear and direct with her arguments throughout the book, and presents a thorough introduction at the start of each chapter to guide the reader through her intricate web of sources. However, these introductions tend to be quite dense, and her lengthy sentence structure in these sections came across as convoluted at times. The language itself was not necessarily inaccessible, but rather its immediate impact gives the reader a lot to untangle before the meat of the chapter begins. I also would have loved to see more personal reflections being interwoven with field notes and literary analysis—because Simpson’s own identity was closely tied to her subject matter, this book seemed to provide a glimpse into Simpson’s introspective journey while learning about the histories of the Mohawk Nation. Those moments provided a sense of grounding within these complex concepts and questions, by interrupting the ethnographic flow and translating them into real human experience.
Though I am not an indigenous person, I really resonated with Simpson’s analysis of ethnographic refusal replacing “recognition” and dismantling “difference” in anthropology. I also found Simpson’s conclusions on membership to be especially poignant in today’s political climate, and her encouragement of further work on the gendered and racialized policies of I.C.E., citizenship practices, and experiences would be a fascinating pursuit. I can only imagine how the border crossing stories that Simpson’s friends retold in this book would be exacerbated in today’s settler colonial reality, and they certainly raise critical questions about how grounded forms of membership are gendered and racialized—a subject that must be taken up in further ethnographic works on citizenship and national belonging.
Overall, I was intrigued by Simpson’s variety of methods and personal reflections, and enjoyed seeing the different facets in which she thinks about ethnographic refusal in Kahnawà:ke social dynamics. I would certainly recommend this to someone who is pursuing indigenous studies, and to anyone who is able to comprehend dense academic texts, and is curious about what breaking anthropological method conventions looks like.
Not only does Mohawk Interruptus provide an excellent introduction to indigenous politics, but it literally “interrupts” the traditional ways that anthropologists conduct ethnographies in a fascinating way. The notion of ethnographic refusal ought to be understood more broadly, and utilized by anthropologists—and the communities they study—much more often.