In this article, I explore the ways territorial authority or sovereignty emerges from within a particular mode of Indigenous creativity—the creation and performance of Hopi taatawi (traditional songs)—despite the appropriation of Hopi traditional lands by the American settler-state. Hopi territories within Öngtupqa (Grand Canyon) are just a sample of the many places where Indigenous authority, as expressed through sound-based performances, continues to resonate despite the imposition of settler-colonial structures that have either silenced Indigenous performances of authority or severed these places from Indigenous territories. Drawing on the work of Hopi composers and intellectuals, I explore how Hopi musical composition and performance are deeply intertwined with Hopi political philosophy and governance, resulting in a form of sovereignty that is inherently sonic rather than strictly literary or textual in nature. Recognizing that this interconnection between territorial authority and sound production is common across many Indigenous communities, I propose listening to contemporary Indigenous creativity not just as an aesthetic form but as a source of sonic sovereignty.
2016] TRIBAL CLAIMS TO PRE-1972 SOUND RECORDINGS 277 sound recording technologies, state courts actually performed most of the work of determining and defending sound recording rights. State court judges drew on the doctrines of common law copyright, unfair competition, and conversion to protect works from unjust exploitation. 5 Also, state legislatures enacted a variety of criminal and civil statutes providing criteria for ownership rights in sound recordings and penalties for trespass on those rights. 6 However, the need for more comprehensive national protection of sound recordings, particularly after the arrival of the cassette recorder, led to the passage of the 1971 Sound Recording Amendment to the 1909 Copyright Act-nearly a century after the invention of the phonograph. 7 This Amendment added sound recordings to the list of works eligible for federal copyright while also substantially limiting the scope of protection in these works. 8 Importantly, the Sound Recording Amendment applied only prospectively. As codified in 17 U.S.C. § 301(c), "[n]o sound recording fixed before February 15, 1972, shall be subject to [federal] copyright" until at least 2067. Even today, only those sound recordings created after February 15, 1972, are entitled to federal copyright protection. The Copyright Act makes clear that, in absence of federal copyright protection for pre-1972 sound recordings, "any rights or remedies under the common law or statutes of any State" continue to apply. 9 This means that state common law or statutes, if any, are still relied on to determine ownership interests in sound recordings made within their jurisdictions. However, federally recognized Indian tribes are not states, nor are tribal members generally subject to state property laws or to the jurisdiction of state courts for their activities on tribal lands. 10 Because the Copyright Act is silent on what law, if any, applies to pre-1972 sound recordings created on reservation lands, performers, sound engineers, and potential users of sound recordings originating in tribal jurisdictions need to look elsewhere for 5.
This chapter discusses the origins, methodology, and preliminary results of the Hopi Music Repatriation Project (HMRP), a community-partnered initiative aimed at securing the return of Hopi ceremonial song recordings and their associated intellectual property rights back to the Hopi Tribe. While scholars have extensively documented the legal and ethical imperatives for the repatriation of Indigenous documentary materials from archives, museums, and other institutions, relatively little has been written about how to conceptualize and carry out a reincorporation of archived ancestral voices back into Indigenous communities. This chapter grapples with a methodology for recirculating archived Indigenous voices in ways that resist dependence on settler-imposed legal frameworks, relying instead on the social and political relationships that already govern ownership of and access to Indigenous knowledge, creativity, and ritual expression. Ultimately, community-based theorizing of repatriation methodologies is necessary to carry out a decolonizing repatriation of archived Indigenous voices.
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