New spatial notational systems for protecting and regaining Indigenous
lands in the United States.
In The Language of Secret Proof, Nina Valerie Kolowratnik challenges
the conditions under which Indigenous rights to protect and regain
traditional lands are currently negotiated in United States legal
frameworks. This tenth volume in the Critical Spatial Practice series
responds to the urgent need for alternative modes of evidentiary
production by introducing an innovative system of architectural drawing
and notation.
Kolowratnik focuses on the double bind in which Native Pueblo
communities in the United States find themselves when they become
involved in a legal effort to reclaim and protect ancestral lands; the
process of producing evidence runs counter to their structural
organization around oral history and cultural secrecy. The spatial
notational systems developed by Kolowratnik with Hemish tribal members
from northern New Mexico and presented in this volume are an attempt to
produce evidentiary documentation that speaks Native truths while
respecting demands on secrecy. These systems also attempt to instigate a
dialogue where there currently is none, working to deconstruct the fixed
opposition between secrecy and disclosure within Western legal systems.