Critical Race Studies, African American Freedom, and Indian Sovereignty

This paper examines the history of Indian sovereignty as it has been constructed and employed in terms of sovereignty, citizenship, group identity and individual rights.  Using the methodological tools of critical race theory, the paper begins with the premise that the meaning of “sovereignty,” like other legal concepts such as “citizenship,” is not static but has a dynamic history.  The meanings and consequences of “sovereignty” and “citizenship” have changed over time and, in the context of southern Indian nations, have taken shape largely in relation to African-American slavery and emancipation and the underlying hierarchies of race and gender categories.  The aim of the paper is to historicize the concepts of sovereignty and citizenship by examining the ways in which legal and social power has been embedded in the concept and enactment of sovereignty and citizenship from the antebellum era through the early twentieth century.  Focusing on the Choctaw/Chickasaw nations, the paper will consider the intertwined issues of sovereignty and citizenship as they have been made and remade in 19^th-century laws and treaties but will also consider their discursive formations.  This paper does not seek to offer a concrete legal definition of sovereignty but instead will explore the shifting, historical meanings, manifestations and consequences of Indian sovereignty and citizenship in Indian nations.