Say We Are Nations: Documents of Politics and Protest in Indigenous America since 1887

For evidence of the persistent precariousness of tribal sovereignty within the recent United States political sphere one does not need to reach as far back as George W. Bush’s 2004 pratfall attempt at defining the term. As recently as September 2015, Republican Party presidential candidate Rand Paul suggested that Native Americans “don’t do very well because there’s been a lack of assimilation.” Such an appraisal remains frustrating and frightening, but not surprising. Federal Indian policies have long been cloaked in different shades of sheep’s wool, but their cumulative agenda, if not effect, has remained relatively consistent: cultural assimilation by way of either subtle or overt blows against tribal sovereignty. Meanwhile, if we turn this asymmetrical power relation on its head, and instead focus on tribal nations’ overarching and enduring policy initiative, it too has remained consistent: sovereignty and nationhood. Unlike their fellow treaty signatories, however, tribal nations never packaged their...