Lecture: Indigenous Nations, Sovereignty, and Settler Colonialism
Lecture script · about 15–20 minutes spoken · Week 4
Opening
Picture a nursing student placed at a tribal health clinic, or a business major whose company is about to sign a contract with a tribal government. Both of them are about to deal with a government. Not a club, not a cultural group, not a chapter of history. A government, with its own laws, its own citizens, and its own land. That is the idea I want you to carry out of this lecture.
Here's where we are. In Week 1 you learned the questions ethnic studies asks of any record. In Week 2 you defined race, ethnicity, and nation. In Week 3 you met the theories of belonging, and you ended on one big line: immigrant peoples on one side, and colonized or incorporated peoples on the other. Native nations are the first example on that second list. So in this lecture we test the immigrant story at once.
We'll go in six steps. First, sovereignty and citizenship. Then a treaty, read closely. Then three federal policies, stated plainly: removal, allotment, and the boarding schools. Last, a framework that names the pattern. Next week, in Week 5, we follow how Native nations have governed, resisted, and endured.
1. Tribal sovereignty: nations that govern
Start with something you've lived. Think of a club you've belonged to, maybe a robotics team or a neighborhood soccer league. Its bylaws say who's a member and who gets a vote. If someone walks in who looks like the members, they still don't get a vote. If a member looks nothing like the others, they still do. Membership comes from the club's own rules. Nobody calls that a racial rule.
Now scale that up to a nation. Tribal sovereignty is the inherent right of Native nations to govern themselves. And federally recognized tribes have a government-to-government relationship with the United States: each one deals with the other as a government, not as a group of private people.
Notice that word, inherent. The right didn't start as a gift from Congress. Native nations were governing their own lands long before 1492. The United States signed treaties with them for exactly that reason. You sign treaties with governments.
That leads to the second idea. Tribal citizenship is membership in a Native nation, set by that nation's own government. It's a political status, like citizenship in any nation, and not a racial category.
One more thing before we check in: names. When we talk about one nation, we use that nation's own name first. Native American and Indigenous are broad terms. American Indian is broad too, and it's also a legal and federal term, which is why you see it in laws and in agency names. And we speak about Native nations in the present tense, because they exist and govern now.
Pause and try this. A friend says tribal sovereignty is "a special benefit for one race." Using what you heard a moment ago, what's wrong with that?
Take a moment and say your reason out loud.
Here's the answer. Tribal citizenship comes from a nation's government, the way any citizenship does, so it's a political status and not a racial one. A tribe is a government, not a race.
2. Treaties: agreements between nations
Imagine two towns that share a river. The upstream town promises not to dam it. The downstream town promises to share a fish ladder it built. Each town keeps its own council, and each signs as itself. Nobody would call that a gift from one town to the other. It's a deal between two governments.
That's what a treaty is: a written agreement between nations, in which each side gives something and is promised something. Treaties between the United States and Native nations are agreements between governments, not gifts.
Let's read one closely, the way the field reads every record. The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 was made between the United States and the Sioux Nation. Those are the names the treaty and the National Archives use, and when you open the treaty, you'll see it also names the separate bands who signed, each by its own name.
First, what it says. It set aside the Great Sioux Reservation, including the Black Hills, which are sacred to the Sioux people. Its first article reads, "From this day forward all war between the parties to this agreement shall forever cease."
Second, who made it. Two governments, each acting for its own people.
Third, whom it affected. The Sioux people, whose land it set aside. And settlers and miners, because that land was set aside for the Sioux people's exclusive use.
Fourth, what happened next. After gold was found following an 1874 expedition, the government confiscated the land in 1877. Count it out. From 1868 to 1877 is 9 years. From the expedition in 1874 to 1877 is 3 years.
Fifth, what the treaty leaves out. The paper records the promise, not what came after it. Ownership of the Black Hills remains the subject of a legal dispute between the United States and the Sioux Nation. We describe that dispute without a verdict. It's a live legal question, and this course doesn't argue it.
Pause and try this. Someone says a treaty is "something the United States gave to a tribe." Which part of the reading we did answers them?
Think back to step two before you go on.
Here's the answer. Step two, who made it. Two governments made the Fort Laramie Treaty, and each side gave something and was promised something, so it's an agreement between nations, not a gift.
So here's the reading in one plain sentence. The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 was an agreement between two nations that set aside the Black Hills for the Sioux people. The United States confiscated that land 9 years later, and the Sioux Nation's claim to it remains in legal dispute.
3. Removal, stated plainly
Moving can be a choice. A family moves for a job, for a school, for a fresh start. Removal was not that, and I want to say it plainly.
Removal was the federal policy of forcing Native nations off their homelands east of the Mississippi River and onto land in the west. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 authorized removal treaties with tribes living east of the Mississippi River. Congress passed it, and the President signed it.
The best-known removal is the Cherokee removal. It was carried out under the Treaty of New Echota, ratified in 1836, and it's known as the Trail of Tears. People were forced from their homes and made to travel west, and many died on the way.
How many? Sources answer that differently. The National Archives gives an estimate of about 4,000 of 16,000 Cherokees dying on the way. That's an estimate, so you say it in words with its source. You never treat it as an exact count, and you'll never see it as a quiz answer. The point doesn't hang on the last digit. Many people died during a forced removal carried out under federal law.
Here's a trap to watch for. The 1830 law talks about treaties, and treaties sound voluntary. But the Cherokee removal was forced. The word "treaty" in the law doesn't change what happened on the trail.
Pause and try this. A summary says the Cherokee "relocated" in the 1830s. What does that word hide?
Hold your reply for a second.
Here's the answer. It hides the force. "Relocated" sounds like a choice, but the record shows a forced removal in which many people died, so forced removal is the accurate term.
4. Allotment: dividing the land
Picture a park that a whole neighborhood shares. One day a new rule carves it into small private lots, hands each household one lot, and sells whatever's left over to outsiders. The neighborhood still has its people. It no longer has a shared park.
That's the shape of allotment: dividing land that a Native nation held in common into separate parcels assigned to individuals, with the land left over opened for sale. The Dawes Act of 1887 divided reservation land into individual allotments, a quarter section to each head of family. It opened the land not allotted for sale. And it made allottees citizens.
Now ask the Week 3 question. What did this law expect the people it affected to become? It expected the members of a nation to become individual landholders and citizens of the United States. That's an assimilation question. Remember Week 3's critics of assimilation theory: it treated one way of life as the standard. The Dawes Act treated one way of holding land as the standard.
Let's put the week's laws on one timeline. The Indian Removal Act came in 1830. The Fort Laramie Treaty came in 1868, which is 38 years later. The Dawes Act came in 1887, which is 19 years after the treaty. From removal to allotment, the whole span is 57 years. So within 57 years, federal policy moved nations west, signed a treaty setting land aside, and then divided reservation land into parcels.
Pause and try this. Which is closer to the Fort Laramie Treaty: the Indian Removal Act or the Dawes Act?
Compare the two gaps we found.
Here's the answer. The Dawes Act. It came 19 years after the treaty, while the removal law came 38 years before it, so the treaty sits closer to allotment.
5. The federal boarding schools
Think about your first week at a new school. The rules, the schedule, the way the building sounded. Now picture a school far from home, run by a government that isn't your nation's, attended because federal policy sent Native children there.
That's what the federal Indian boarding schools were: the federal school system for Native children that ran from 1819 to 1969. The Department of the Interior's 2022 investigative report found 408 federal schools across 37 states or then territories from 1819 to 1969, with marked or unmarked burial sites at about 53 schools.
Hold those figures with care. They're a federal agency's findings, dated by the year of its report, and you say them in words with their source. You never key them as quiz answers, and this course links no image of human remains.
Now let's measure how long the system ran. It started in 1819 and ended in 1969. That's a span of 150 years. Compare that with the timeline from removal to allotment, which was 57 years. The schools ran far longer than that whole span. They weren't a short episode from long ago. They ran into the lifetimes of people living now.
The boarding schools also open one of this course's threads across groups, the separate-schools thread. Later weeks follow school segregation through other groups' court cases and walkouts. For now, notice the first entry on that thread.
Pause and try this. Someone calls the boarding schools "a brief practice from the distant past." What two years answer them?
Say the two years before you go on.
Here's the answer. 1819 and 1969. The system ran for 150 years, and it ended within living memory, so it was neither brief nor distant.
6. Settler colonialism: naming the pattern
Let's step way back. After 1492, plants, animals, and diseases moved between the Americas and the rest of the world. Crops first grown in the Americas spread across the globe. Animals brought by Europeans arrived in the Americas. Diseases new to the Americas spread among Native peoples. And many of the newcomers who followed came to stay.
Stay. That word is the heart of this week's framework. Settler colonialism is a framework from Wolfe, in a 2006 article in the Journal of Genocide Research called "Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native." Here's the idea: settlers come to stay and take the land, so colonialism is an ongoing structure rather than a single past event.
A structure, not an event. Look back over what we've covered. Removal in 1830. A treaty in 1868. The Black Hills confiscated in 1877. Allotment in 1887. Boarding schools from 1819 to 1969. Different tools, across more than a century, pointing the same way. Wolfe asks you to read those dates as one pattern about land.
Now set it beside Week 3. Blauner, in 1969, gave us internal colonialism, which sets groups that entered by force apart from groups that entered as immigrants. Wolfe's work came in 2006, 37 years later. Both reject the idea that every group followed an immigrant path. Wolfe adds a twist: for Native nations, the people who arrived were the settlers.
And here's the test from Week 3. The melting-pot image pictured a newcomer group joining a host society. Apply it to Native nations, and the picture flips. They weren't newcomers. They were the governments already there.
Like every framework in this course, this one is a tool, not a verdict on every case. A fair question to put to it is whether a framework about taking land leaves enough room for what nations did and do: negotiate, govern, resist, and endure. Next week takes up that question.
Pause and try this. A family moved from one country to a new city for work. A Native nation was governing its homeland when settlers arrived to stay. Which one fits the immigrant model?
Ask yourself who did the arriving.
Here's the answer. The family fits the immigrant model, because they arrived and joined a society. The Native nation doesn't, because it didn't arrive; the settlers did, which is the case settler colonialism describes.
Closing
Let's pull it together. Tribal sovereignty is the inherent right of Native nations to govern themselves, and tribal citizenship is a political status, not a racial category. A treaty is an agreement between nations, and the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 set aside the Black Hills, which the government confiscated in 1877. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 led to forced removals, including the Trail of Tears. The Dawes Act of 1887 divided reservation land and opened the rest for sale. The federal boarding schools ran from 1819 to 1969. And settler colonialism, from Wolfe, reads all of that as one structure about land.
Next in this module, read the Readings and Resources page, then work through the lecture tutorial, the practice set, and the quiz, and join the discussion. Next week, in Indigenous Survivance and Self-Determination, we follow how Native nations have governed, resisted, and endured, and why they are still here.
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