Of tax law, space, and colonization: The implementation of the 1919 Alaska school tax

Max is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies. His research interests include law and social movements, tax law  primarily Indigenous tax histories, colonial tax histories, and the socio-legal history of international taxation), Native American history, environmental history, historical geography, and borderlands history. As a socio-legal historian, Max is interested in the relationship between tax law and settler colonialism, with a specific focus on Alaska Natives. His doctoral work explores how tax law was involved in (de)colonizing processes. Specifically, it analyses tax law’s socio-cultural, spatial, and political impact on Alaska Natives during the twentieth century. In doing so, Max’s research uses several case studies to contend that tax law, when deployed by local officials, either contributed to the assimilation or further marginalization of Alaska Natives. Conversely, when tribes chose to use tax law, these tax histories unpack tribal taxation’s ability to revitalize Indigenous spaces and push back against settler colonialism and capitalism.