##Part 1

Sovereignty was definitey part of many Indigenous peoples "political" thoughts. The key to understanding this is realizing that what we might interpret as politics could be vastly different from what was and is considered sovereignty via politics to those communities. The whole philosophical basis could be different. To really get into a discussion about this, we need to define sovereignty and decide if we are using a definition from an Indigenous viewpoint.

In many Western traditions, sovereignty is designated through politics and/or military power. However, traditional views for some Tribes could base sovereignty through these things, but also culture, spirituality, or language. For example, Vine Deloria, Jr., a Native American scholar and author, commented on sovereignty by saying:

Sovereignty, in the final instance, can be said to consist more of continued cultural integrity than of political powers . . . Sovereignty, then, revolves about the manner in which traditions are developed, sustained, and transformed to confront new conditions. It involves most of all a strong sense of community discipline and a degree of self-containment and pride that transcends all objective codes, rules, and regulations (Deloria, 1979).

Ojibwe Elder Lac Courte Oreilles says:

"We define and accept sovereignty as "Spiritual Sovereignty." We do not accept the assertion that sovereignty had its origins in the political ideologies of medieval European nations. We believe and accept that we practiced spiritual sovereignty long before the arrival of Europeans on this American continent . . . sovereignty cannot be given or bestowed from one nation to another."

Sovereignty has, of course, been interpreted political and legislatively. By way of American interactions with Tribes, John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, recognized in Worcester v. Georgia (1832) that:

"Indian Nations [are] distinct political communities, having territorial boundaries, within which their authority is exclusive, and having a right to all the lands within those boundaries, which is not only acknowledged, but guaranteed by the United States . . . Indian nations had always been considered as distinct, independent political communities, retaining their original rights, as the undisputed possessors of the soil from time immemorial."

David Wilkins, another Native scholar and political analyst, defines it as:

"A sovereign nation is a distinct political entity that exercises a measure of jurisdictional power over a specific territory" (Wilkins & Stark, 2011, p. 38).

Definitions are going to vary widely depending on the context - who said it, when they said it, why they said it, how they said it. For the purposes of this post, let's consider sovereignty to be the running theme in the above and later cited material. Sovereignty is the state of a group being distinct and functionally in a fundamental sense as independent from other recognized nations and maintaining self-governance in any or all aspects.

On that note, let's draw some conclusions from what would be commonly understood.

Pre-Colonization

It can be difficult to determine things during this time due to the lack of written records that often could confirm such sociopolitical ideas such as the concept of sovereignty. Yet, what is left does provide enough information to make conclusions about this time period, conclusions that do indicate that Native Nations certainly thought of themselves as polities who exercised sovereignty. Evidence to pinpoint these notions can be examined from many different angles, including societal structure, politics, and even architecture.

In North America, for example, the Indigenous Hopewell Culture overlapped with the Indigenous Adena Culture and covered enough land that it extended from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. They lived in permanent communities and practiced horticulture. What set them apart from many other cultures is that they built monstrous earthen monuments. Tens of thousands of these mounds have reportedly been built across the country. Commenting on them, Stannard (1992) says (bold mine) “No society that had not achieved a large population and an exceptionally high level of political and social refinement . . . could possibly have had the time or inclination or talent to design and construct such edifices” (p. 18).

On the East Coast of the United States, the Haudenosaunee, commonly known as the Iroquois Confederacy, operated a complex government structure with a functioning constitution, known as the Great Law of Peace, and an alliance between several nations. Their constitution even inspired elements of the United States Constitution (Johansen, 1982). The Haudenosaunee designated the lands within their boundaries according to the traditional homelands of the Tribes that comprised the alliance, but noted that these boundaries existed because of linguistic differences, not a separation of national boundaries via politics. To accomplish this, it was recognized that each of the comprising Tribes had to relinquish some of their existing sovereignty to the other nations of the Confederacy. (Notes, 2005).

The Maya civilization “governed fifty or more independent states and that lasted in excess of 1000 years” (Stannard, 1992, p. 37).

Let's look at a more specific case, though.