"If ever a concept grabbed hold of hearts and minds in Indian country in the past couple decades surely it would be that of sovereignty. Native people talk about it with reverence, demanding that it be respected by the federal government, and expect their tribal governments to assert it. Even the federal government speaks the language of sovereignty when it claims to uphold the “unique government-to-government relationship” it has with tribes. Never mind that what the feds mean when they use the word “sovereignty” is that unique brand of quasi-sovereignty they believe they bestow upon tribal nations via the federal Indian legal system, not sovereignty in the international sense, the kind nation-states mean when they talk about it. The same is true with the concept of self-determination.

In general there’s a huge difference between what the federal government means when it talks about Indian sovereignty and self-determination and the kind tribal nations mean. Although it can be said that the concepts probably vary from tribe to tribe, self-determination for Indian people overall is representative of the state of political independence that existed prior to colonization. The process of colonization has given a new meaning to the idea of self-determination for the colonized, and the process of decolonizing the relationships between tribes and the United States is, at least in part, about how we define the terms of “sovereignty” and “self-determination.” Self-determination and sovereignty have become concepts that colonizing states have defined for the colonized, and indigenous peoples worldwide have pushed back against those limiting and self-serving definitions, which is why it took 22 years to pass the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples."

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Dina Gilio-Whitaker: Indian Self-Determination and Sovereignty (Indian Country Today 1/17)