We Are Because She Was/Is: A Review of Gil Anidjar’s On the Sovereignty of Mothers through Kumeyaay Creation, Maternal Creatrixes, and Rematriation

Abstract

This review reads Gil Anidjar’s On the Sovereignty of Mothers: The Political as Maternal through an Indigenous rematriation framework grounded in Kumeyaay intellectual traditions. Anidjar’s central claim—that the political has always been maternal—offers a powerful challenge to liberal and patriarchal political theory by repositioning mothering as public, infrastructural, and foundational to collective life. While his work does not explicitly address Indigenous worlds or settler colonialism, I argue that his concept of the “maternal contract” opens generative space for dialogue with American Indian and Indigenous Studies, particularly rematriation discourse. Drawing on Kumeyaay creation epics and land-based epistemologies, this review demonstrates that maternal sovereignty is not metaphorical but cosmological, ontological, and jurisdictional—embedded in creation, governance, and relational accountability. Reading Anidjar alongside Indigenous feminist scholarship reveals both the strength of his intervention and its limits, particularly his treatment of slavery, sovereignty, and reproductive power without fully accounting for settler colonial regimes that targeted Indigenous motherhood, kinship, and futurity. I contend that rematriation offers not only a critique but an extension of Anidjar’s thesis, reframing the political as grounded in continuance rather than domination. Ultimately, this review proposes an Indigenous rearticulation of Anidjar’s claim: we are because she was/is.