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6.16: The Primacy of Sovereignty and Land

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    A concept central to understanding Indigenous American cultures is tribal sovereignty. This refers to the inherent right of tribes to self-govern, define their own membership, and manage their resources and lands. Sovereignty is not a gift from the U.S. government but a pre-existing right that has been legally recognized, though often violated (Wilkins and Stark 2017). The fight for sovereignty is a cultural and political struggle to protect a distinct way of life.

    Intertwined with sovereignty is a profound relationship to land. For most Indigenous cultures, land is not a commodity to be owned but a relative and a source of identity, history, and sustenance. As Lakota scholar Vine Deloria Jr. argued, place-based creation stories and ceremonies tie Indigenous peoples to specific geographies in a way that is fundamentally different from Western conceptions of property (Deloria 1973). The ongoing political battles over resource extraction, pipeline construction, and sacred site protection are, at their core, conflicts over this foundational cultural value.


    6.16: The Primacy of Sovereignty and Land is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.

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