Steven Newcomb: Tribal sovereignty or original independence?

In American Indians, Time, and the Law (1987), Charles Wilkinson says that U.S. Supreme Court opinions written by Chief Justice John Marshall “made it clear that Indian tribes were sovereign before contact with Europeans…” (p. 55). But this way of stating the matter accepts the view that “Indian tribes” and “sovereignty” were already existing here in our part of the planet before the foreign European words and ideas of “Indian tribes” and “sovereignty” had been invasively brought here.

To think that “tribes” and “sovereignty” can emerge and exist in human experience without those names (words) and ideas is tantamount to saying that Columbus could “discover” a place by the name “America” fifteen years before the name (word) “America” had even been coined. Mexican scholar Edmundo O’Gorman pointed this out in his book The Invention of America (1962): It would have been necessary for a place called “America” to be existing at the time when Columbus first set sail in order for him to “discover” a place by that name on his voyage.

The view that “tribes” and “sovereignty” were already existing here on this continent before the Europeans brought those foreign words and ideas here to this continent does not stand up to scrutiny. Extending a point expressed by Richard Brown in A Poetic for Sociology, it was not possible for a reality of “tribes” and “sovereignty” to emerge here on this continent until the foreign words and ideas of “tribes” and “sovereignty” were available here for our ancestors to depict themselves in that manner and to share that experience of reality by means of those foreign words and ideas.

Clearly, human reality existed in terms of the languages of our ancestors, and we had a whole vocabulary for understanding the nature of the existence of our original free nations. But that form of reality called “tribes” and “sovereignty” could not exist here on this continent until those specific foreign words and ideas were available to provide the basis for that shared experience of reality.