Tribal Sovereignty

Global politics today only recognize sovereignty from nation-states, which, as Opello and Rosow clearly define in The Nation State and Global Order, is a “type of politico-military rule” comprised of many aspects including a specific geographic region indicated by boundaries. There are, however, other entities that are associated in organized groups, but do not have territory that is recognized by global politics, and thus these entities do not have sovereignty.

The perfect examples of this are tribes. America, which was once a mere land mass inhabited by Native Americans, has been transformed into a series of nation-states that have sovereign powers in global politics. The Native American tribes in the United States have undergone much cultural persecution, property confiscation, and limitation of sovereignty. These tribes, after many tortuous decades, have been given reservations on U.S. soil and partial sovereignty, but are given no say in the global political spectrum. In 1831, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia went to the Supreme Court where Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that Indian nations can be regarded as “‘domestic, dependent nations’” that are only theoretically sovereign. Over 140 years later, the Supreme Court ruled against the Indian nation again in United States v. Blackfeet Tribe. The 1973 court ruling stated that “‘an Indian tribe is sovereign to the extent that the United States permits it to be sovereign’”(http://www.umass.edu/legal/derrico/nowyouseeit.html). Can the extent of sovereignty truly be governed by higher sovereignty? Isn’t the principle of sovereignty the opposite of being governed by another body?

This poses an interesting dilemma, reverting one’s thought process back to the definition of sovereignty. While the Indian nations within the U.S. may be autonomous and may, through cultural beliefs and practices, deem their rulers as authorities over their nations, it would be superfluous to argue that these nations have the power or the capacity to dominate politically and thus claim their sovereignty. Of course, this only applies to the tribes within the States. In Africa, for example, many tribes have strong and threatening dominance. In these situations, tribes have lots of power in their areas of influence, they have the capabilities to control many people within this area, they have created a position of authority within themselves, and they are autonomous in that the tribe governs itself. It could then be argued that these tribal bodies have sovereignty, but in this era when globalization has linked many foreign lands and politics are discussed, debated and determined on a global level, it becomes obvious that 1) only nation-states are given a voice of sovereignty and 2) tribes are seen as inferior entities to nation-states.

That being said, I do think that tribes, and clans should be recognized as sovereign groups. In the history of the United States alone it may have prevented much of the oppression and assimilation of tribal peoples. Recognizing these ethnic clans as bodies of influence might prevent some of the violent acts being committed between tribes because these entities would have the opportunity to politically wrestle for the land, rights or other issues that they deem necessary to haggle over instead of resulting to their only current means of persuasion: violence.