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Abstract
Sovereignty. Self-determination. Autonomy. Nation. Native American studies is currently being shaped dramatically by this particular set of terms, and the prevailing discourse aims to interrogate not only various senses of tribal self-determination, but also earlier formulations of cultural, spiritual, political, and artistic autonomy. Indeed, the publication of myriad nuanced and substantial works of scholarship focusing on the subject of sovereignty alone is testament to the critical role that definitions of indigenous self-determination and authority play within the field today. Inevitably, perhaps, it is also the case that the definition of the terms mentioned above, and the application of those terms to any particular set of circumstances in Indian Country, is not entirely a straightforward affair. Nor, given the seriousness of the matter in hand, should it be. On the contrary, the values that a state of sovereignty affords a Native individual or tribe is a complex and multifaceted matter, and should be understood as such. For that reason, while it is vital to prioritize the benefits of tribal independence, it is also necessary to take note of the diverse nature of a range of issues that inform current conversations about indigenous homelands, tribal self-government, and various forms of Native sovereignty. The purpose of this essay is to consider that diversity in situ, and to raise some important questions about the possibility — and effectiveness — of signalling our international support for indigenous communities as they seek to enact and express various forms of sovereignty and nationhood.
Notes
1. Stark’s essay, entitled: ‘Nenabozho’s Smart Berries: Rethinking Tribal Sovereignty and Accountability’, appeared in 2013, and many of the excellent points made in that piece were, to the best of my knowledge, presented at the Indian Tribes and Human Rights Accountability Symposium held at Michigan State University (4–5 October 2012). I first read ‘Nenabozho’s Smart Berries’ just as my book Sovereign Stories: Aesthetics, Autonomy and Contemporary Native American Literature (Oxford, 2013) appeared, and I was delighted to see that many of the same questions which concerned me about sovereignty were important to my Anishinaabe colleague. More important than the sharing of questions, however, is the commentary that Stark’s wonderful essay provides — like the work of Wilkins and other Native scholars — offering tribally specific responses to legal cases and historical experiences.
2. I note — with some considerable embarrassment, but also a little pride — that the opening chapter of Sovereign Stories deploys a rhetorical construction which also featured in the scholarship of Professor Wilkins. I write: ‘Sovereignty. Self-determination. Autonomy. Nation. Native American Studies is currently being shaped dramatically by this particular set of terms’ (Kirwan, Citation2013: 3), while Wilkins writes: ‘Sovereignty. Democracy. Constitution. These are mere words. But words, and the often variable meaning or meanings assigned to them […] matter’ (Wilkins, Citation2012: 1). I first used that convention in my CCUSB talk, which took place a mere two months before the publication of the Ratification (Professor Wilkins was not in attendance, I should add!). There is, then, a certain synchronicity evident here: that he and I should emphasize those terms through the use of an almost identical convention only serves to underscore their significance, both in international and local contexts.
3. Craig Womack teases out the various issues surrounding the term ‘sovereignty’ in his essay ‘Book-Length Native Literary Criticism’, in Reasoning Together (Citation2008: 74). Womack ultimately explains that, even though many Native communities believe the modern ‘nation-state is inconsistent with Native cultures’, the term nevertheless designates indigenous independence, autonomy, and empowerment and, as such, has particular resonances within current discourse.
4. Specifically, Alfred wonders ‘how a European term and idea […] came to be so embedded and important to cultures that had their own systems of government since the time before the term sovereignty was invented in Europe’ (Barker, Citation2005: 39).
5. I mistakenly attributed this quotation to Thomas Jefferson during my talk, and perpetuated the error in Sovereign Stories, possibly as a result of quoting Charles F. Wilkinson on the matter. As Lee Hester Thurman Jr has recently pointed out, these words are, of course, Daniel Webster’s (Citation2014: 114).
6. A certain wistful irony lies in the fact that one of the greatest legal victories in Indian Country arose out of the Jicarilla Apache’s suit against oil and gas companies in New Mexico in 1982. In that case, Merrion v. Jicarilla Apache, the court ruled: ‘sovereign power […] is an enduring presence that governs all contracts subject to the sovereign’s jurisdiction’ and cleared the way for tribal taxation by recognizing the Jicarilla Apache’s ‘role as a commercial partner’ and ‘as a sovereign’ (see United States v. Jicarilla Apache Nation, Citation2011).
7. The Eleventh Amendment can be interpreted in a number of ways, and its ‘jurisprudence has become over the years esoteric and abstruse and the decisions inconsistent’ (Legal Information Institute, Citation1992). Despite the perplexed nature of the various rulings handed down in relation to this amendment, it is clear that, in the case of the Coeur d’Alene, the Supreme Court ruled the tribe was a fully autonomous, independent sovereign state, and therefore could not bring suit against any other state.
8. This is not Barker’s final word on the matter, however, and her comments on more positive and enabling definitions and interpretations of sovereignty are mentioned below in this essay.
9. Simpson, much like Barker, is not simply suggesting that this imbalance automatically limits the usefulness of sovereignty for the tribes. On the contrary, she insists that we consider political sovereignty in the context of the tribes’ cultural and social presence prior to colonization — that is, the tribes’ citizenship and nationhood — and, from there, move towards an understanding of the various moments of tension and negotiation that exist between the tribe and the settler state in the present moment. The assertion of Mohawk independence is, then, ongoing.
10. As Ulrike Wiethaus argues in the same collection of essays, ‘First Nations’ practices of self-determination and politico-philosophical thought have remained in continuous, autonomously defined existence, even if hidden from Euro-American view’ (Wiethaus, Citation2008: 2).
11. It is worth noting that Vizenor’s theory possibly relies on a certain vagueness and flux, and may, for that reason, appear to be a slightly impractical, if not entirely redundant, bid to engage with the ‘windmills’ to which Deloria made reference. However, Vizenor’s perception of a ‘sui generis sovereignty’ — which he argues is the result of ‘native motion and active presence’ (1998: 15) — appears to be a space not entirely dissimilar to the ‘dynamic, continuous site of theoretical investigation, evaluation, and revision’ that Teuton has persuasively argued will aid tribal people’s attempts to reach the ‘crucial goal of collective tribal self-definition’ (Citation2008, 14). Indeed, Raheja’s definition of ‘visual sovereignty’, described as an ‘always in motion and […] inherently contradictory’ state (2007: 1163), has both notional and material consequences, which are themselves fully revealed in the intertwining of various forms and expressions of indigenous autonomy. It is this point that Joseph Bauerkemper makes in his excellent essay, ‘Indigenous Trans/Nationalism and the Ethics of Theory in Native Literary Studies’, in which he links Vizenor’s theory to ‘a diversity of practices and relations that facilitate the survivance of Native peoples’ (in Heath Justice & Cox, 400).
12. It is in the wake of this vigorous working out of sovereignty that Wilkins has noted sovereignty has diverse meanings in various settings (CitationWilkins, 2008, 18).
13. Notably, Heath Justice’s conceptualization should assuage, or indeed rejoin, Gellner and Breuilly’s recently expressed anxiety that ‘nationalism has not often been […] sweetly reasonable nor […] rationally symmetrical’ (Gellner & Breuilly, Citation2009: 2).
14. Fitzgerald was Taoiseach from June 1981–March 1982 and December 1982–March 1987; Haughey served as Taoiseach for four periods: 1979–81, in 1982, 1987–89, and 1989–92.
15. In 1923 the Irish Free State informed the British government that it intended to issue its own passports, on which the holder would be described as a ‘Citizen of the Irish Free State’. The British government objected, and insisted that those travelling from Ireland be in possession of a British passport describing the holder as a ‘British subject’. Officials often confiscated the Irish Free State passport (see: <http://www.difp.ie/docs/Volume2/1923/515.htm>). In the year that the Irish Free State sought entry into the League of Nations, 1923, it was also one of a number of nations that supported the Haudenosaunee Confederacy’s application to the intergovernmental organization.