The indigenous People of the United States have had their culture, language, customs, laws, lands, and religion denied to them once they were conquered by the descendants of the Europeans who first came to this continent in the 1600s. In 1776, the descendants of the aforementioned Europeans formed this country and the destruction of the Indigenous people’s way of life through death and/or assimilation began in earnest.
Two hundred and forty-eight years later, the surviving Indigenous Nations/Tribes are trying to re-establish their Languages, customs, cultures, and religions.
I am very aware of the fact that there are Indigenous Nations in the USA that are developing their own educational systems that would prepare their younger generations to join the World Stage. They will be teaching their history, language, customs, and cultures, as well as studying American and World Histories.
The above statement brings us to the second paper by Kevin Inglesby. It is a follow-up to my article posted on June 13, 2022, titled “Language-Places-and-Spaces.” Here is the link to his first paper: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/6/13/2103886/-Language-Places-and-Spaces.
Below is his abstract called “Empowering Nations: Asserting Sovereignty Through Indigenous Wisdom, Language Immersion, and Legal Innovation”, he goes one step further as to how the Indigenous People of the USA are exerting and/or re-establishing their sovereignty through the Laws, Treaties, Language, and Education.
Kevin Inglesby
NASX 521
Empowering Nations: Asserting Sovereignty Through Indigenous Wisdom, Language Immersion, and Legal Innovation
Abstract:
Indigenous culture-based education (CBE) contains multidimensional arrangements of political, linguistic, educational, and cultural contexts. Indigeneity in the United States is directly connected to a long history of political implications. Yet, Indigenous culture-based educational systems are on the rise. Throughout this international collaborative model, I have learned a wealth of information from various studies, others’ personal experiences, and amazing activities in communities that mobilize culture and education. The mobilization of culture-based education is intertextual and reaches through many domains of our worlds. Sovereignty is one of those domains that occupies a seminal position in conversations of education. The right to self-determination is a human right. How self-determination and expressions of sovereignty are exercised may manifest differently across the diverse range of Indigenous peoples in what is contemporarily known as the United States. Throughout this paper, I make inquiries towards how sovereignty is asserted through the means of education, law, and linguistic immersion programs. I am suggesting that the development of a variety of culture-based educational systems can support assertions of sovereignty in a wider political context.
(Keywords: Culture-based Education, Law, Linguistic Immersion programs, Sovereignty)
The geopolitical context of what is contemporarily known as the United States has a long history of homogeny, hegemony, and the exploitation of Indigenous people. Exploitative and exclusive measures have been forced upon so many dimensions of Indigenous peoples' everyday lives, community building, and assertions of self-determination. Self-determination and sovereignty go hand-in-hand. Sovereignty is inherently an indefinite concept, so often applied on large scales with legal, state, and federal frames. Yet, sovereignty is connected to a plethora of human activity. For example, the development of culture-based education (CBE), legal policies, and the mobilization of community all regard aspects of sovereignty. These activities have far reaching connections to political and legal realities that are highly influential for the evolution of a community. Through this essay, I am suggesting that the development of culture-based education (CBE) in the multifaceted arrangements it may take on can support assertions of sovereignty in a wider political context.
Sovereignty is inherently a nebulous concept. There are various iterations of how sovereignty may be defined. Broadly speaking, the National Congress of American Indians defines “Sovereignty [as] a legal word for an ordinary concept—the authority to self-govern[1]” (NCAI.org:11/14/2023). However, sovereignty fluctuates in practice because of its interpretive ambiguity. Macklem (1993, p. 1346) points out that “sovereignty is a contested site of interpretation, and thus remains open to transformation and application to diverse forms of human association.[2]”
In the context of establishing CBE institutions, dominant authority may hold over concepts like cultural heritage, expressing political power within one’s group, or the development of educational policy to safeguard community endeavors. In this way, Erica-Irene Daes (Geneva, 1997) writes that “everything that belongs to the distinct identity of a people and which is theirs to share, if they wish, with other peoples.... must retain permanent control over all elements of [their] own heritage”. Aspects that distinguish a groups identity directly regard how educational environments disseminate information, who participates, and how heritage is interwoven through curriculum to reflect a community's dispositions. In educational settings that empower individuals, respect must be paid to worldviews and cultural nuance. Cajete and Pueblo (2010, p. 1126) point out that “traditionally, American Indians view life through a different ‘‘cultural metaphor’’ than that of mainstream America. It is this different cultural metaphor that is needed to frame the exploration of an appropriate Indigenous educational philosophy.”
A highly salient step in the establishment of culture-based institutions requires an illumination of political realities. Cultural metaphors may be framed appropriately in Indigenous philosophy by acknowledging and honoring treaties held by Indigenous groups. Through a certain lens in international law, a treaty is a legally binding tool to uphold a mutual recognition of sovereignty. Tribal sovereignty has a long history. Kalt and Singer (2004, p. 4) maintain that “its roots lie in the fact that Indian Nations preexist the United States and their sovereignty has been diminished but not terminated. [Still,] tribal sovereignty is recognized and protected by the U.S. Constitution, legal precedent, and treaties, as well as applicable principles of human rights.” Diminished levels of sovereignty stem from a plethora of sources. One of these sources is a complete lack of understanding around history paired with assimilative intent. In this way, Kalt and Singer (2004, p. 4) proceed to point out that “the fact that non-Indians can ask these questions [regarding rights to self-government] reflects a failure of understanding of U.S history and law.”
Yet, establishing general awareness around sovereignty is just one task in the process of creating culturally based institutions. Another task, as Cajete and Pueblo (2010, p. 1127) maintain “is to undertake a translation of traditional Indian concepts and foundational principles into a contemporary framework of thought and description. This leads to the development of a contemporized, community-based education process, which is founded upon traditional tribal values, orientations and principles, but simultaneously utilizes the most appropriate concepts and technologies of modern education.” Community-based processes in these contexts call for a level of political sovereignty. Coffey & Tsosie (2001, p. 196) consider that “contemporary legal battles center around the concept of political sovereignty as Indian nations attempt to define and defend the boundaries of their jurisdictional authority. However, these legal struggles for political sovereignty coincide with a larger battle: the battle to protect and defend tribal cultures from the multitude of forces that threaten the cultural survival of Indian nations.” Through the lens of political sovereignty and fighting larger battles to defend cultural survival, CBE and Indigenous-language Immersion programs can be a front line for assertions of sovereignty.
Morrone (2021, p. 4) elucidates that “properly speaking, political sovereignty is the qualification of a device for creating and maintaining social order: a political community’s governing device”. Governing devices require a set of principles to follow and are informed through cultural metaphors and worldviews. Macklem (1993, p. 1348) goes on to write that “principles are necessary to assess the justice of this distribution of sovereignty, which themselves depend on the value of the good being distributed.”
Governing principles can be informed through a general framework but still must be mobilized through a specific community’s worldview. In this way, Cajete and Pueblo (2010, p. 1127) note that “every community must learn to integrate the learning occurring through modern education with the cultural bases of knowledge and value orientations essential to the perpetuation of a community and its way of life.” Learning to interface with our globalized world is a very important matter. However, more importantly, steps into the global stage from a sovereign-to-sovereign basis stem from an integration of knowledge systems that are founded in a community's worldview. Cajete and Pueblo (2010, p. 1127) maintain that “based on this foundation, critical Indigenous educator/scholars work to develop a new language of and for Indigenous history.”
The use of chronotope in the creation of a new language of and for Indigenous history can proceed through multifarious contexts. Chronotopes regard spatial-temporal uses of language and inform the construction of linguistic function. Moreover, Bahktin (1981) explains that “chronotopes invoke and enable a plot structure, characters or identities, and social and political worlds in which actions become dialogically meaningful, evaluated, and understandable in specific ways. Specific chronotopes produce specific kinds of persons, actions, meanings, and values.” Assertions of sovereignty that proceed from a basis of linguistic command inform how new histories are developed. Engagement with the world by no means requires an assimilation of worldview.
As noted above, a framework for Indigenous educational theory can follow a general model for conduct projected through the lens of a specific community’s context. Cajete and Pueblo (2010, p. 1127) elucidate an effective framework when they write that:
“Indigenous educational cultural studies combine an evolving and integrative theory and practice to affirm and demonstrate Indigenous pedagogy through: (1) creating a new language; (2) transcending Western academic boundaries; (3) decentering the historic and contemporary consciousness and assimilative power of colonial authority; (4) rewriting the institutional and discursive story of Indigenous people; and (5) applying the essence of democracy as an active political principle for reasserting Indigenous rights, self-determination and economic viability.”
Educational frameworks as assertions of sovereignty in this way serve multifaceted functions. In the realm of self-governance, an active assertion of such an educational framework socializes a community through their world view, controlled and disseminated by the community. CBE frameworks can also establish a basis of communication between social groups. To certain degrees, outsiders must acknowledge that their worldview is not the only worldview, and that mutual recognition is crucial to uphold respect of nation-to-nation sovereign actions. Integration can serve as a means of mutual interface between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities rather than as a means of cultural assimilation.
Alongside political sovereignty, cultural sovereignty is a very important concept to weave through CBE. One may view “cultural sovereignty as a means by which Native peoples can constitute their own histories and identities in a manner which, among other things, will counterbalance the false images that have been presented as truth by non-Natives" (Coffey & Tsosie 2001, p. 200). To provide an effective and holistic basis for CBE, the actual trajectory of history must be acknowledged to provide any levels of reconciliation. A real orientation of Indigenous history must be recounted by those who live and experience these oppressive realities, not recounted or told by outsiders who have some stake in the circumstances. Asserting cultural sovereignty may serve to reclaim how history is told, who tells it, and the role these energies play in educational environments.
All knowledge has some basis in a cultural context, a point which Kimmerer (2002) points out when she writes that “Western science also takes place in a cultural context, of which students and practitioners of science are often unaware.” Awareness of cultural contexts within the creation of CBE institutions is a highly salient matter. Kimmerer (2002) also notes that “as educators have come to understand the growing importance of cultural diversity in academia, development of cross-cultural competence is being integrated into university curricula all over the country.” Cultural diversity is very important. Still, just as important is an understanding of where those diverse cultures come from, and the positions they occupy in relation to multidimensional environments. Understanding where cultures stem from, how worldviews are established, and the relationships people maintain with their environments imbue diversity into educational contexts. Awareness of these multidimensional facets of human experience can provide much needed awareness around a variety of knowledge systems.
Awareness of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and its contexts can provide insights into the political dimensions that undergird Native Americans’ experience in the United States today. Finn et al (2017) explain that “Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) is a term, relatively new to Western science, that encompasses a subset of traditional knowledge maintained by Indigenous nations about the relationships between people and the natural environment.” These areas of knowledge are passed down through generations practicing living heritage and can be seminal in educational environments. The inclusion of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) in curriculum fosters multicultural perspectives within institutions.
Visions anchored in locally informed epistemology can serve as a foundation for the inclusion of other aspects of heritage that support assertions of sovereignty in wider contexts, informed through a general framework. One framework comes through the lens of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). There are forty-six articles embedded in UNDRIP (2007, p. 8) that are “recognized in the charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and international human rights law”. Many of the articles in UNDRIP can clearly apply to these circumstances I am attempting to describe. Yet, I will include specific articles that connect to culturally-based education, law, and linguistic immersion programs.
The knowledge of a group's environment serves multifaceted roles towards their well-being. Article 24 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) (2007, p. 18) entails that:
“1. Indigenous peoples have the right to their traditional medicines and to maintain their health practices, including the conservation of their vital medicinal plants, animals and minerals. Indigenous individuals also have the right to access, without any discrimination, to all social and health services. 2. Indigenous individuals have an equal right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. States shall take the necessary steps with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of this right.”
The management of TEK, maintenance of health and well-being associated therein, and access to all things in accordance with TEK is necessary to establish culturally-based education. These aspects of educational sovereignty serve multidirectional functions. The promotion of CBE and control over curriculum can facilitate the decentering of long held myths regarding Indigenous education. Assimilative processes like Americanization have been forced upon generations of Indigenous peoples. Garcia (2019, p. 108) maintains that “despite the fact that such myths are contextualized within historical experiences of schooling, we know the Americanization process and “national myths” continue to permeate schools serving Indigenous students and communities.” Asserting sovereignty over educational processes can be a point to combat these ‘national myths’ and deleterious pursuits.
A focus on the multidimensional, dynamic, and systemic aspects of TEK can inform many levels of knowledge and its implementation to one’s environment. Brown (2003, p. 206) includes that “TEK tends to be tacit rather than explicit, context-dependent rather than free-floating, and thus hard to codify and communicate.” Including epistemological systems here can be facilitated by community collaboration, or an application of co-produced action heritage in ways that brings the relevance of heritage into one's contemporary circumstances. Moreover, Finn et al (2017) point out that “beyond shared principles of factual observations and comanagement principles, the broader aspects of TEK represent an expansive and deeper understanding of the interaction of humans with multiple levels of the physical, social, and spiritual environment.” Epistemic developments can inform many aspects of world views and can serve as a dimension towards asserting sovereignty.
Finn et al (2017) note that “TEK represents the use of local institutions to provide leaders and environmental stewards with rules for social regulation and for the development of appropriate world views and cultural values.” By engaging local institutions, political or cultural sovereignty may be framed using TEK to foreground ideas like relationship to land, who has access to resources there, and rights to harvest parts of the environment for cultural use. TEK informed through one's heritage practices can be woven into different fields of thought in educational institutions. Kimmerer (2002) writes that “traditional knowledge represents an intellectual tradition of generating, validating, and interpreting information about relationships in the natural world.”
Yet, one may ask, (see Kimmerer 2002) “why include traditional ecological knowledge in [fields like] biological education?” Relationships to our environment are key towards interacting with places through generative practice. TEK can support aspects of cultural sovereignty through control over how that information is disseminated and integrated into a community's identity. Constituting ones identity through heritage in connection to TEK can illuminate important concepts that influence peoples across cultures as well. With a deeper understanding of TEK, heritage, and community mobilization one can see that "traditional ecological knowledge is not restricted to the biology of subsistence activities but includes detailed observations of population ecology and species interactions, which arise from long-term association with a particular flora and fauna” (Kimmerer 2002).
Other aspects of TEK to include within CBE regard knowledge of medicinal practice, management, and information about the species of specific areas. Kimmerer (2002) provides an example here when she notes that:
“Traditional knowledge of the Inuit contained information new to science on range, winter behavior, mortality, and demography of the eider. TEK has been shown to provide accurate and reliable species information, and therefore effective management, in a growing number of cases, including fisheries (Berkes 1977), caribou age structure (Mander 1991), census of bowhead whales (Huntington et al. 1999), forest fungi (Richards 1997), wolves (Stephenson 1982), and food plants (Anderson 1996, Turner et al. 2000).”
In a legalistic view, traditional ecological knowledge can be encompassed under the jurisdiction of intellectual property law. Intellectual property law may be wielded to provide a legal route to take when these levels of sovereignty are impinged upon. UNDRIP article 31 regards the protection of various aspects of intellectual property rights. Article 31 (2007, p. 22-23) states that:
“1. Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions, as well as the manifestations of their sciences, technologies and cultures, including human and genetic resources, seeds, medicines, knowledge of the properties of fauna and flora, oral traditions, literatures, designs, sports and traditional games and visual and performing arts. They also have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their intellectual property over such cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions. 2. In conjunction with indigenous peoples, States shall take effective measures to recognize and protect the exercise of these rights.”
Coffie and Tsosie (2001, p. 203-204) explain that “today, Indian Nations are becoming increasingly proactive about asserting control over the intangible aspects of their cultures which are commonly designated as ‘intellectual property rights.’” A safeguard around intellectual property requires highly engaged community solidarity and action. A confluence of these two worlds- law and education- is an invaluable and tremendously worthwhile endeavor. The promotion of a path to not only survive, but to thrive, can be a seminal foundation for assertions of sovereignty in wider arenas. Barnhardt (2005) maintains a notion in corroboration with these ideas when he writes that “as Indigenous people reassert their world views and ways of knowing in search of a proper balance between these “two worlds,” they offer insights into ways by which we can extend the scope of our educational systems to prepare all students to not only make a living, but to make a full-filling and sustainable life for themselves.”
To create a full-filling and sustainable life that reflects cultural continuity and worldviews is directly supported by Indigenous-Language Immersion (ILI) programs. A general framework to be funneled to community context in connection to ILI programs can be informed through UNDRIP article 14 (2007, p. 13-14). UNDRIP article 14 contains three subclauses regarding access to education and development of Indigenous education programs like ILI that support the inclusion of Indigenous cultural heritage and linguistic practice. Article 14 states that:
“1. Indigenous peoples have the right to establish and control their educational systems and institutions providing education in their own languages, in a manner appropriate to their cultural methods of teaching and learning. 2. Indigenous individuals, particularly children,
have the right to all levels and forms of education of the State without discrimination. 3. States shall, in conjunction with indigenous peoples, take effective measures, in order for indigenous individuals, particularly children, including those living outside their communities, to have access, when possible, to an education in their own culture and provided in their own language.”
Educational systems in Indigenous languages are key to maintaining identity and heritage. Hermes and Kawai‘ae‘a (2014, p. 307) contribute to this point when they write that “speaking through an Indigenous language is one of the deepest forms of identity reclamation and validation for people of Indigenous heritage”. The establishment and control of educational institutions that convey Indigenous culture, heritage, and language can be found in different parts of the United States. Indigenous-Language Immersion (ILI) programs manifest as one medium of establishment and control of educational institutions. McCarty et al (2021) explain that:
“Along a 41-mile stretch of the St. Lawrence Seaway lies the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation—the Land Where the Partridge Drums, also known as St. Regis. Mohawk is a Haudenosaunee (Iroquoian) language spoken by people Indigenous to present-day upstate New York, southern Québec, and eastern Ontario. The self-referential term is Kanien’kehá:ka, People of the Flint, a reference to flint deposits used for tool-making in what is now Mohawk Valley, New York.”
Political and ideological shifts to educational pursuits typically involve levels of restriction. Restrictions can manifest through legal and informal processes that can slow certain levels of action a community can take. Yet, “the Akwesasne Freedom School was born out of this struggle, as parents in the encampment refused to send their children to assimilative state-sponsored schools” (McCarty et al 2021). Refusal of assimilative schooling can proceed through a mode of sustainable self-determination. Maintenance of self-determination can unfold in many ways within educational contexts. Imbuing one's heritage as a foundation of identity in educational pursuits does not inherently imply undermining larger power structures. Indigenous-Language Immersion models can provide a balanced engagement between and within power relationships. For example, McCarty et al (2021) elucidate that “as an expression of sustainable self-determination, ILI operates within and outside a framework of historically constituted power relations that have worked to suppress, co-opt, and distort Indigenous authority.”
Indigenous-Language Immersion programs can help communities better equip and understand how to use their heritage in ways that support Indigenous authority. In this way, a community-based approach can serve to propel developments that bring heritage into classrooms. McCarty et al (2021) and Leonard (2017) elucidate that:
“Language reclamation is bottom-up work, Leonard says, driven by community agents based on historical and contemporary needs and desires. Reclamation “links language work with the underlying causes of language shift”, calling for an historical and ecological awareness and valorization of community-based worldviews. In this sense language reclamation can be seen as a practice of decolonization.”
Community-based worldviews are permeated through heritage selected to most effectively address contemporary needs and desires. One’s heritage is more thoroughly understood when command of their native language accompanies other aspects of tradition. Language can serve to ground assertions of self-determination and proactive measures incorporated into Indigenous-Language Immersion schools. Yet, such an assertion is not a new idea. Indigenous scholars like Mary Hermes and Keiki Kawai‘ae‘a (2014, p. 303-304) note that “efforts to sustain Indigenous languages, as intentional political resistance to the dominant colonizing forces, have always existed.” There are different notions that foreground the application of heritage in such efforts described above. For example:
McCarty et al (2021) maintains that “undergirding ILI goals and practices, we propose, is a vision anchored in local epistemological origins that guides a commitment to revitalize languages endangered by settler colonialism, promote learners’ academic and holistic wellbeing, and foster cultural identity and continuance. This commitment reflects and advances sustainable self-determination. As articulated by Cherokee scholar Jeff Corntassel (2008), sustainability for Indigenous peoples “is intrinsically linked to the transmission of traditional knowledge and cultural practices to future generations”.
Sustainable self-determination proceeds through community contexts that can be informed through larger structures of framework. For example, the notion of intergenerational transmission of linguistic features is a key element across all peoples that can contribute to sustainable self-determination. Yet, the application of intergenerational linguistic transmission will unfold in connection to numerous variables. Legal, political, economic and social dimensions encompass many of the factors that should be addressed through the process of sustainable self-determination. UNDRIP (2007, p. 8) “Article 3 [states that] Indigenous people have the right to self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.” However, Wilkins (2018, p. 121) maintains that “international instruments such as UNDRIP are not self-executing.” Thus, a community must be highly proactive and engaged in the process of self-determination.
There are legal policies written into legislation that can serve to safeguard self-determination through education for example. Still, they should be mobilized and fully engaged by communities and their allies to ensure that community standards are met in ways that are inclusive, agreeable, and reflective of community values. One of the policies written into legislation that promotes the recognition of Native American heritage, linguistic, and educational practices flows through the 1972 Indian Education Act. The U.S Department of Education (1980) provides an overview of the 1972 Indian Education Act when they write that “the 1972 Indian Education Act was the landmark legislation establishing a comprehensive approach to meeting the unique needs of American Indian and Alaska Native students.”
Another policy written into legislation is the Native American Languages Act of 1990 that "established federal policy to allow the use of Native American languages as the medium of instruction in schools, and affirms the right of Native American children to express themselves, be educated, and assessed in their own Native language” (NCNALSP.org:2014). While these policies provide a path for the development of social and cultural structures, a community must successfully establish plans for education, apply for grants, and mobilize an effective strategy to support CBE and ILI. The establishment of educational environments that bolster Indigenous identity are one step in the process of solidifying CBE and ILI programs. In concert with the implementation of the policies cited above for example, programs can and should seek accreditation.
The World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium (WINHEC) is an organization with a goal to develop and maintain Indigenous academic pursuits on many levels. The organization “was established in August 2002 at the World Indigenous Peoples Conference on Education (WIPCE) in Alberta, Canada. WINHEC’s aim is to bring professionals together to achieve common goals through higher education. Members come from many different countries and a variety of diverse areas such as university departments, research organizations and government agencies” (WINHEC 2002, accessed 11/27/2023). These types of organizations can serve as a point of accreditation to facilitate the development of valid, credible, and effective educational environments (see WINHEC 2002, What is WINHEC Accreditation?). Establishing a standard for educational institutions can promote a community's constructive use of heritage with more control over how and what a curriculum will entail. In this way, sovereignty may be exercised through the planning and implementation of CBE in a given community.
Who gets to participate in discourse that informs educational standards? Lixinski (2013, p. 410) points out that “experts play a key role in determining what is relevant in a certain field of knowledge. Expertise is a discourse, and according to Foucault, discourses do not simply reflect their objects of analysis, but in fact create them, and in the process position and license certain people to speak about it at the expense of others.” Indigenous scholars, communities, and allies must exercise agency in their educational endeavors that ultimately inform and drive discourses, approaches, and methods to regulate their institutions.
An informed populous can assert sovereignty through approaches that support cultural continuity. Through this essay, I hope to have substantiated my suggestion that the development of culture-based education can support assertions of sovereignty in a wider political context. Assertions of sovereignty manifest in one avenue through the development of learning communities. These learning communities offer engagements that cross a multitude of spheres making up our contemporary world. There is so much importance to maintaining cultural nuance and channeling living cultural practice through modern mediums of cultural exchange. I hope to have shown that culture-based educational environments, Indigenous-language Immersion programs and legal assertions to back these activities can serve as a medium towards the integration of culture with broad impacts that allow a merging of worlds of knowing. Vine Deloria Jr. (1997, p. 28) refers to educational institutions “as a means of allowing human energies and understandings to converge and come together to form a more sensible picture of human life”.
Culture-based education, Indigenous-language immersion schools, and law can serve as an index that points to the sovereign status of Tribes promoting these assertions of self-determination. History has been rife with the exploitation, subversion and attempted assimilation of Indigenous peoples to a mainstream population. Yet, shifts are occurring each day that sovereignty is asserted by Tribes through a plethora of avenues. Each generation is supported by the foundations laid by the diligent, persistent, and creatively minded people coming before. A reclamation of futures and self-determinative pursuit is illuminating in leaps and bounds as Indigenous peoples assert sovereignty through the fields of culture-based education, Indigenous-language immersion, and law. Assertions of sovereignty can and do occupy seminal positions in a diverse range of conversations around the topics described here. As communities become stronger through solidarity, self-determination becomes a mainstay to develop over all aspects of life. Together, all Indigenous communities and allies may contribute to the weaving of intricate, beautiful and powerful mosaics of human experience in ways that they choose- to reflect the right of self-determination and empowerment of Tribal sovereignty.
Bibliography:
Anderson, MK. (1996). Tending the Wilderness. Restoration and Management Notes. 14: 154-166.
Bahktin, MM. (1981). “The Dialogic Imagination”. Ed. M. Holquist. Austin. University of Texas Press.
Barnhardt, Ray. (2005). Creating a Place for Indigenous Knowledge in Education: The Alaska Native Knowledge Network. Local Diversity: Place-Based Education in the Global Age.
Berkes F. (1977). Fishery resource use in a subarctic Indian community. Human Ecology. 5:289-307.
Brown, Michael F. (2003). Who Owns Native Culture? The President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Cajete, Gregory A. & Pueblo, Santa Clara. (2010). Contemporary Indigenous Education: A Nature-Centered American Indian Philosophy for a 21st Century World. The University of New Mexico. Elsevier, Futures 42, p. 1126-1132.
Coffey, W., & Tsosie, R. (2001). Rethinking the tribal sovereignty doctrine: cultural sovereignty and the collective future of Indian nations. Stanford Law & Policy Review, 12(2), 191-222. https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/stanlp12&div=22&g_sent=1 casa_token=gGuEKKMNFHEAAAAA:VWtMYoUzTyMK_tSQ9sR85pYybN9GOLOFO5FGOzUhkna5mhGff24rGX9a56_dYirLC5nulJ_a&collection=journals
Corntassel, J. (2008). Toward sustainable self-determination: Rethinking the contemporary Indigenous-rights discourse. AlterNatives, 33(1), 105–132. https://doi.org/10.1177/030437540803300106 [Crossref] [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]
Daes, Erica-Irene A. (1997). Protection of the heritage of indigenous people / by Erica-Irene Daes, Special Rapporteur of the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities; Chairperson of the Working Group on Indigenous Populations. United Nations.
Department of Education. (1980). History of Indian Education. ED.gov. Accessed 10/15/2023.
Finn, S., Herne, M., & Castille, D. (2017). The value of traditional ecological knowledge for the environmental health sciences and biomedical research. Environmental health perspectives, 125(8), 085006.
Garcia, Jeremy (Hopi/Tewa), Samuel Tenakhongwa (Hopi), and Bryant Hongouti (Hopi). Chapter 7: Indigenous Teachers: At the Crossroads of Applying Indigenous Research Methodologies Download Indigenous Teachers: At the Crossroads of Applying Indigenous Research Methodologies. In Applying Indigenous Methodologies: Storying with Peoples and Communities. Eds. Sweeney Windchief and Timothy San Pedro. New York, NY: Routledge, 2019. pp. 103-121.
Henderson, Ames (Sa’ke’j) Youngblood. Hamilton, Robert. Wilkins, Kerry. (2018). The Necessity of Exploring Inherent Dignity in Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Asserted vs. Established Rights and the Promise of UNDRI, and Strategizing UNDRIP Implementation: Some Fundamentals. In UNDRIP Implementation: More Reflections on the Braiding of International, Domestic, and Indigenous Laws. Special Report. Centre for International Governance Innovation.
Hermes, M., & Kawai‘ae‘a, K. (2014). Revitalizing Indigenous languages through Indigenous immersion education. Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education, 2(2), 303–322. https://doi.org/10.1075/jicb.2.2.10her [Crossref], [Google Scholar]
Huntington, HP. and the communities of Buckland, Elim, Koyuk, Point Lay and Shatoolik. (1999). Traditional knowledge of the ecology of beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas) in the eastern Chukchi and northern Bering Seas, Alaska. Arctic. 52: 49-61.
Kalt, Joseph P. and Singer, Joseph W. (2004). Myths and Realities of Tribal Sovereignty: The Law and Economics of Indian Self-Rule. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=529084 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.529084
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. (2002) Weaving Traditional Ecological Knowledge into Biological Education: A Call to Action. BioScience, Volume 52, Issue 5,Pages 432–438, https://doi.org/10.1641/0006-3568(2002)052[0432:WTEKIB]2.0.CO;2
Leonard, W. Y. (2017). Producing language reclamation by decolonising “language.” In W. Y. Leonard & H. De Korne (Eds.), Language documentation and description (pp. 15–36). EL Publishing. [Google Scholar]
Lixinski, Lucas. (2013). International Cultural Heritage Regimes, International Law, and the Politics of Expertise. International Journal of Cultural Property. 20:407-429. https://forms-lib-umt-edu.weblib.lib.umt.edu:2443/illiad/MTG/illiad.dll?Action=10&Form=75&Value=648368
Macklem, Patrick. (1993). Distributing Sovereignty: Indian Nations and Equity of Peoples. Stanford Law Review. Ch. 10. Vol. 45:1311. https://forms-lib-umt-edu.weblib.lib.umt.edu:2443/illiad/MTG/illiad.dll?Action=10&Form=75&Value=648460
Mander, J. (1991). In the Absence of the Sacred. San Francisco: Sierra Club.
Morrone, A. (2021). Political Sovereignty and Its Enemies. Athena: Critical Inquiries in Law, Philosophy and Globalization, 1, 1-36.
National Coalition of Native American Language Schools & Programs. (2014). Know the Laws, Regulations, Rules, and Administration. NCNALSP.org, (Accessed 11/14/2023.) http://www.ncnalsp.org/know-the-laws
National Congress of American Indians. (1944). (Accessed 11/14/2023). https://www.ncai.org/about-ncai
Stephenson, RO. (1982). Nunamiut Eskimos, wildlife biologists, and wolves. Pages. 434-439. in Harrington FH, Pacquet PC, eds. Wolves of the World. Park Ridge (NJ): Noyes.
Turner N Ignace MB Ignace, R. (2000). Traditional ecological knowledge and wisdom of aboriginal peoples in British Columbia. Ecological Applications. 10:1275-1287.
United Nations General Assembly. (2007). United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). United Nations Plenary Meeting. 13 September 2007. https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2018/11/UNDRIP_E_web.pdf
Vine, Deloria. (1997). Self-Determination and the Concept of Sovereignty. Journal of Native American Sovereignty.
World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium. (2002). https://winhec.org (Accessed 11/27/2023.)
[1] The National Congress of American Indians points out that “hundreds of treaties, along with the Supreme Court, the President, and Congress, have repeatedly affirmed that tribal nations retain their inherent powers of self-government. These treaties, executive orders, and laws have created a fundamental contract between tribes and the United States” (NCAI.org:11/14/2023).
[2] Macklem (1993:1347) recognizes that there are varying levels or degrees to the exercise of sovereignty when they note that “degrees of sovereign authority, as any federalist knows, can be simultaneously wielded by a number of different entities—states, provinces, and, as the American experience demonstrates, Indian nations. This is not to suggest that each entity wields absolute sovereign power over other competing sources of power; instead, within a federal system, levels of government are sovereign within their respective spheres of authority.”