Sovereignty: American Indian Civics Project

The American Indian Civics Project website is a great source of information relating to historical events surrounding the formation of American Indian sovereign nations.  A sovereign nation is one in which an absolute legal authority exists who can define independent laws by which people live.  When the Europeans came to North America the Indian nations banded together in an act of sovereignty and formed treaties, alliances, and trade agreements with other nations as a show of defiance and to protect their way of life.   “Each Indian nation consisted of a unique group of people who had a distinct language and a distinct moral, cultural, and religious structure; controlled and regulated a specific geographical area; and possessed governmental powers acknowledged by the tribal people and enforceable by some sort of tribal authority” (American Indian Civics Project).

In response to this, after the Europeans began to settle in North America, many sovereign Indian nations chose to work in collaboration with British colonial leaders to negotiate sovereign partnerships with them.  In doing this the colonists and the various Indian nations accepted the new colonial governments as individual sovereign nations and the Indian nations were accepted by the colonists as their own individual sovereign nations.

This took a negative turn, though, when the colonial and British governments declared that they did not fully acknowledge Native American sovereignty, and they took steps to dissolve their sovereign powers.  These included:

• “Dispossession.  When the colonists initially bartered for Indian lands claiming that they could make the region more profitable, the Indians refused to sell.  Colonists resorting to dispossessing Indians - simply claiming and moving onto Indian land and refusing to move.
• Removal.  The colonists asserted that because they could use the land more profitably than tribal nations, Indians would have to remove themselves from their ancestral lands and relocate beyond the boundaries of colonial settlement.  If Indians refused to relocate, the colonists responded that they would be forceably removed.
• Assimilation.  While the colonists preferred that Indian people remove themselves from their settlements, they were willing to accept some Indian presence within the colonies if they assimilated into their society by accepting Christianity and British culture and traditions.
• Elimination. If the Indians refused to move, assimilate, or accept colonial governors, colonists had the right to wage a just war” (American Indian Civics Project).

These acts resulted in an even higher level of distrust between the natives and the colonists stemming from the unexpected turn-around by the British.  The Native Americans signed sovereignty agreements with the British in a show of faith, but the British backed out and declared that they did not accept the natives as a sovereign people.  It was acts like this, among many others, that have plagued relations between natives and non-natives throughout history. 

American Indian Civics Project. (n.d.). Narrative Historical Overview. American Indian Civics Project: 20th Century Indian Relations with the United States. Retrieved July 1, 2014, from http://americanindiantah.com/history/nar_colonial_legacy.html