Maximilien (Max) Zahnd is a Lecturer in Law at the University of Sussex and a Research Fellow at University College London (UCL Anthropology). His research explores the relationship between tax, Indigenous sovereignty, and settler colonialism in North America, focusing on the Arctic and Subarctic regions. Using contemporary and historical case studies in Alaska, he examines the ways tax can help colonization unfold and how Native communities use tax to fight back against settler colonialism.
Literature suggestions
Two of my favorite articles are Matthew Fletcher’s “The Legal Fiction of the Lake Matchimanitou Indian School” and Elizabeth Reese’s “The Other American Law.” Fletcher provides a thought-provoking and vivid account of colonization through the fictional history of a grade school run by a Native American tribe. Reese’s article, which makes the case for a more prominent place of tribal law in U.S. legal scholarship, contributes to a better understanding of what the decolonization of legal scholarship should entail.
Fletcher, M. (2005). The Legal Fiction of the Lake Matchimanitou Indian School. American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law, 13(3), 597-634.
Reese, E. (2021). The Other American Law. Stanford Law Review, 73(3), 555-636.
Other partners’ bios and literature suggestions:
Thematic Network on Critical Arctic Studies 