Colonial misappropriation and infrastructural accumulation: how US federal agencies worked to expropriate O’odham land and water for science

Abstract

Abstract

Colonial misappropriation refers to the ways that settler colonial government agencies and institutions misappropriate Indigenous land, water, knowledge and bodies to defy national and tribal laws, extending settlement and solidifying ideologies that sustain difference. This paper examines one specific project – the Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) – to show how O’odham relationships and resources were misappropriated to build infrastructure for scientific and technological development on the Tohono O’odham Nation during the mid-twentieth century. By expanding their jurisdiction into O’odham lands through infrastructure projects and coercive lease arrangements, the United States government was able to further the development of KPNO. The accumulation of infrastructure and misappropriation of land, water, labor and material culture benefited the observatory and astronomy industry at the expense of O’odham sovereignty and livelihoods. Government officials and workers then re-narrated this history in exhibits and promotional literature to celebrate the observatory's continued presence on O’odham lands. This paper contributes to scholarship on infrastructure within settler colonial studies by discussing land speculation, settler expansion and resource colonialism across tribal boundaries. Additionally, it attends to the promises of economic benefit and the misappropriation of Indigenous labor for infrastructure projects to reveal architectures of dependency.