Author’s Note

I did not grow up learning about Native nations as sovereign peoples. Like many, I was taught fragments—tragedies, myths, textbook summaries—often told from the outside, rarely with depth, and almost never with reverence. Writing this essay is part of unlearning that inheritance.

I am not Native American. I do not pretend to speak from within these traditions. But I believe that taking Native political thought seriously is not an act of charity—it is a matter of democratic clarity and historical honesty. For too long, American political discourse has sidelined the oldest governments on this continent, and the voices that have most consistently defended land, consent, and accountability.

This essay is my attempt to listen more carefully. It is written with admiration, with humility, and with the conviction that Native traditions of governance and resistance are not just valuable for Native peoples—they are essential for anyone who wants to understand what democracy could still become.

I have drawn on Native sources, scholarship, and words wherever possible. Any missteps are mine alone. My hope is that this work can contribute, in some small way, to the broader effort of remembering—not just what was taken, but what still lives.

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Native political thought is not a footnote to American history. It is an intellectual tradition older than the republic, and more enduring than many of its promises. Long before European settlers declared their independence, the Indigenous nations of North America had already built societies governed by law, by consensus, and by a profound ethic of relationship—with the land, with one another, and with the unseen.

Yet in the dominant historical narrative, Native Americans are often reduced to victims of conquest or romanticized relics of a vanishing world. Their political thinking is rarely treated with the seriousness it deserves: as a living tradition, rooted in sovereignty, and constantly adapting to shifting circumstances. From the confederacy-building of Shawnee leader Tecumseh to the nation-to-nation diplomacy of Secretary Deb Haaland, Indigenous leaders have articulated coherent visions of power, justice, and governance—sometimes in resistance, sometimes in negotiation, always in relation to their own laws and lands.

This essay follows that long trail of thought. It traces the evolution of Native political strategy and philosophy across two centuries of dispossession, survival, and renewal. It does not romanticize. It listens. From Tecumseh’s legal-spiritual appeals to unity, to Chief Joseph’s pleas for justice; from Vine Deloria Jr.’s intellectual sovereignty to Wilma Mankiller’s practical self-governance, and into the present-day leadership of Haaland, these stories reveal more than resilience. They reveal a tradition of political clarity, of ethical governance, and of nationhood that has never disappeared.

Native thought is not a sidebar to American political life. It is a mirror—and sometimes a challenge. It asks what it means to govern with consent, to live with the land rather than over it, and to hold power in trust rather than extract it. These questions are not just Indigenous questions. They are democratic questions. And they may hold answers to the crisis America now faces.

Tecumseh and the Pan-Indian Vision

In 1809–1810, Shawnee leader Tecumseh set out on a tour of the Midwest to rally tribes against U.S. expansion. In speeches to U.S. officials and gatherings of “red men,” he articulated a sweeping vision: that the land was a common patrimony of all Indigenous nations, entrusted to them by the Great Spirit for use and enjoyment. In his memorable speech to Governor William Henry Harrison in Vincennes, Tecumseh declared that the continent “then all belonged to red men, children of the same parents, placed on it by the Great Spirit…to fill it with the same race”. Crucially, he insisted that no tribe had the right to cede land without the consent of all. “For no part has a right to sell, even to each other, much less to strangers,” he said – a direct rebuke to American treaty-makers. Tecumseh’s argument was that all Native nations shared equal rights in the unoccupied land, that treaties made by one group without full consent were invalid, and that only collective action could check U.S. encroachment.

Tecumseh’s message had deep spiritual and legal force. He invoked the “Spirit that rules the universe,” reminding listeners that the land was sacredly given to his people. This meant that a treaty was not a simple transaction, but an agreement among sovereign partners – and one betrayed, a ground for resistance. His political strategy combined appeals to tribal dignity with pragmatic alliance-building. He forged a confederacy of tribes, from the Indiana Miamis to the Creeks in the South, seeking to unite disparate nations in defense of shared land and liberty. In this way Tecumseh challenged the U.S. federal doctrine (later articulated in law) that tribes were wards or mere “domestic dependents” of the United States. Instead, he insisted that Indigenous peoples were the rightful owners of the land and could only be bound by their own councils. As he bluntly put it, “The white people have no right to take the land from the Indians, because they had it first; it is theirs”.

Tecumseh’s political thought, then, fused communal sovereignty with strategic unity. It was neither irrational defiance nor romantic mysticism; it was a calculated assertion of rights. By framing land as inalienable common property and calling on tribes to act in concert, Tecumseh envisioned a form of federalism among Indigenous nations themselves. His appeal was as much legal as it was spiritual, arguing that even U.S. transactions could be nullified if done without full tribal consent. In short, Tecumseh laid a foundation: Native nations are sovereign, the land belongs equally to them, and only collective self-government – not U.S. treaties made by one-sided parties – can determine its fate.

Sitting Bull and the Ghost Dance: Spiritual Resistance

Chief Sitting Bull (Tatanka Iyotake) of the Hunkpapa Sioux embodied the militant defense of the Lakota world in the 1870s and ’80s. Unlike Tecumseh’s formal diplomacy, Sitting Bull’s resistance was framed through spiritual and cultural renewal. After leading warriors to victory at the Battle of the Little Bighorn (1876), he retreated to reservation life in the face of overwhelming U.S. pressure. But rather than acquiescing, Sitting Bull became a central figure in the Ghost Dance movement of 1889–90, a prophetic religion promising the restoration of Native life.

Sitting Bull’s own words make clear his pride and defiance. He famously declared, “If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man, He would have made me so in the first place… It is not necessary for eagles to be crows.” In other words, Native peoples need not emulate white society – they have their own identity and destiny. He insisted on his difference, later saying “I am a red man… No white man controls our footsteps. If we must die, we die defending our rights”. These aphorisms are not empty bravado; they underscore a political stance. Sitting Bull was asserting that Lakota culture and land-use were self-validating, not subject to foreign authority.

At the same time, Sitting Bull participated in negotiations and used the language of rights. He resisted the division of the Black Hills in the 1870s gold rush, demanding that sacred lands remain Sioux property. After the Ghost Dance spread to the Sioux reservation, U.S. agents moved to arrest him in 1890; he was killed in the attempt, an event that led directly to the Wounded Knee Massacre. In death, he became a martyr for resistance.

But Sitting Bull’s legacy extends beyond martyrdom. His embrace of the Ghost Dance movement was a political strategy: it fused communal prayers for justice with the assertion of the Lakota as an autonomous people. It challenged assimilation by pointing to a revival from within. His quotes (preserved by early ethnographers) stress communal dignity and natural authority. For example, he asked rhetorically, “What white man can say I never stole his land…? What white woman was ever captive by me? Yet they say I am bad. Is it wrong for me to love my own? … God made me an Indian.” With humor and moral logic, Sitting Bull turned the critique back on the colonizers, insisting that the Sioux were acting righteously on their own land.

In short, Sitting Bull’s politics blended spiritual vision with a clear-eyed stance on sovereignty. He did not trust treaties made by US authorities, instead placing faith in a prophecy that the colonists’ era would end. His leadership thus kept alive the idea that Indigenous nations are self-governing societies entitled to their lands. This spiritual resistance – the last major uprising of the Plains tribes – set a tone: Native political thought could be unapologetically proud, culturally rooted, and still demand justice in universal terms.

Chief Joseph and the Plea for Equality

While Sitting Bull used spiritual resistance, Nez Perce leader Chief Joseph (Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt) took a different tack. After years of armed flight and defeat in 1877, he surrendered with a speech that became famous for its dignity and heartbreak: “I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.”. Even in surrender, Chief Joseph framed his case as one for rights and equality under U.S. law – though bitterly he saw that treaties were always broken.

Two years later in Washington, D.C., Joseph addressed President Hayes and Congress. He did not demand a separate state or endless war; instead he asked simply for justice and fairness. He said, “Treat all men alike. Give them the same laws. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. … All men were made by the same Great Spirit… all people should have equal rights upon [the earth].” He used the Founding Fathers’ vocabulary – brothers, equal rights, one mother earth – to appeal for an end to forced confinement. To him, it was utterly unnatural to expect a “free man” to be “penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases”, any more than one would expect “rivers to run backward.” He argued that detaining Indians on reservations violated basic principles of freedom. He asked, “I have asked some of the Great White Chiefs where they get their authority to say to the Indian that he shall stay in one place… They cannot tell me.”

Chief Joseph’s viewpoint was almost the flip side of Tecumseh’s: he was no longer fighting guerrilla war but seeking equality within the American system. He had endured war and exile, and what he wanted finally was the ability to live in peace – to be judged and treated by the same laws as whites. This was a radical request in 19th-century Washington. By invoking a universal religion and saying “we are all brothers,” he highlighted how reservation policy denied liberty to people who should be citizens in every sense.

Later in that address, Joseph made a prophetic point: “Whenever the white man treats the Indian as they treat each other then we shall have no more wars… We shall be all alike — brothers of one father and mother, with one sky above us and one country around us and one government for all.” In other words, the dream of the Nez Perce chief was assimilation paired with equal justice: one shared country and one government for all, Indian and white alike, governed equally by law. He envisioned an end to the colonial double-standard.

Chief Joseph’s political thought is often overlooked in favor of his poetic surrender speech, but in Washington he delivered an “Indian’s view of Indian affairs” that reads like a manifesto of civil rights. He demanded an even chance to prosper, not handouts or special status – “Let me be a free man,” he said, “free to travel…free to follow the religion of my fathers…free to talk, think and act for myself – and I will obey every law.” His tone was not resentment but weary insistence on dignity. In this way, Chief Joseph showed that Native political thought could take on American revolutionary ideals, holding the U.S. to its own principles of liberty. Even if his immediate hopes were dashed, his ideas – of equality, freedom of movement, and justice – would resonate in later demands for tribal rights.

The 20th Century Awakening: Red Power and Intellectual Sovereignty

By the mid-20th century, Indigenous peoples in the United States faced an era of concerted assimilation. The 1924 Indian Citizenship Act made all Native Americans U.S. citizens, and policies like the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act promised self-governance but often fell short in practice. Into this context stepped a new wave of activists and thinkers who insisted on nationalist (rather than assimilationist) politics. They demanded that treaties and sovereignty be honored. One towering figure was Vine Deloria Jr. (1933–2005), a Standing Rock Sioux lawyer and writer.

Deloria’s 1969 book Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto broke taboo by harshly critiquing American policy and ignorance of Native concerns. He coined the term “Indian Manifesto” and helped spark the Red Power movement of the 1960s–70s. Underlying Deloria’s activism was the concept that tribes were sovereign nations within the United States, not just interest groups or ethnic communities. In fact, ASU historian David Martínez notes that Deloria “wrote more than 20 books” on these themes, essentially inventing modern American Indian studies focused on tribal self-determination. He demanded that U.S. law recognize tribal nations on par with other nations, because, as he put it, tribes were in fact “sovereign nations protected by federal Indian law”.

In his later career Deloria used every tool: he served as executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, testified before Congress, and wrote legal briefs. But his core message remained: Native identity and sovereignty must be affirmed. Deloria himself called it “Indian nationalism.” In a 2019 interview about Deloria, ASU’s David Martínez emphasized that Deloria’s priority “was about getting America to recognize that Indian tribes were, in fact, sovereign nations protected by federal Indian law”. Deloria’s work made plain that tribal autonomy wasn’t a quaint ideal but an obligation of the U.S. government. He viewed laws and treaties as contracts between nations – ones too often dishonored – and he saw tribes as having the political right to govern themselves, not merely to be customers of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Deloria’s intellectual activism laid groundwork for the self-determination era that followed. Under Presidents Nixon and Carter, and through the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975, tribes reclaimed control over education and services. Deloria, who once casually contrasted “history books about famous chiefs” with his own activism, helped inspire a generation of scholars and lawyers to write about contemporary rights. He showed that Native political thought was not folklore; it was analysis of law and policy, mixed with humor and moral critique. His “anecdotes come straight out of his own experience,” reflecting reservation life. In short, Deloria reframed the conversation: he insisted that Indigenous people are political actors with ideas about governance, not objects of charity.

Wilma Mankiller and the Era of Self-Determination

By the 1980s and ’90s, the focus shifted from protest to practical nation-building. Wilma Mankiller (1945–2010) – the first woman elected Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation – exemplified how Native political vision could be put into practice. Mankiller was raised under federal relocation programs and later swept up in the 1960s Indian civil rights movements. But when she returned to Oklahoma in the late 1970s, she worked within tribal government to rebuild the Cherokee Nation from the ground up.

Mankiller saw sovereignty as self-reliance. Early in her career, she helped build housing and community projects. Once she became chief in 1985, she championed self-determination agreements: tribal contracts that transferred control of federal programs to the Cherokee Nation. As she later recalled, she had “a strong believer that tribes should be able to allocate their own resources and make their own decisions about the needs of their people”. When the Cherokee Nation signed its first Self-Governance compact with the U.S. in 1994, Mankiller – recovering in a hospital – insisted it be “FedExed” to her so she could sign it immediately. For her, regaining control over healthcare, education, and social services was not symbolic: it was critical to rebuilding the nation.

Under Mankiller’s leadership, the Cherokee government built clinics and schools, expanded revenue sources, and reformed its constitution. Importantly, she stressed accountability: tribes could and should manage their affairs ethically. In her own words, before taking over programs Cherokee leaders were already “very accustomed to having federal audits,” and taking control only meant they could no longer blame outsiders. Mankiller’s vision of sovereignty was pragmatic and community-rooted. She emphasized that governments should be as responsive as families and local communities (“tribes are not foreign nations,” she noted), but should also be free to pursue development on their own terms.

Mankiller embodied a recurring theme: resistance through self-governance rather than armed struggle. She once said that her own people had “an extraordinary ability to face down adversity and continue moving forward”. Indeed, Cherokee history was marked by upheaval (the Trail of Tears, for example), yet the Nation “could rebuild their community themselves”. As Principal Chief, Mankiller helped her people do exactly that – by insisting on local leadership and on implementing programs designed by Cherokee, not outsiders. In this way, she carried forward Tecumseh’s and Deloria’s calls for tribal strength, proving that sovereignty could look like schools on the reservation and safe water for villages, not just speeches.

Mankiller’s era also saw the federal government acknowledging “Tribal Self-Governance” as a policy goal. But she reminded people that self-determination was a right, not a favor. She worked against any effort to “diminish tribal self-determination,” building coalitions to protect sovereignty. Through speeches and books, she advocated that tribes could cooperate with state and federal governments only on equal footing – she was careful to negotiate, not to cede authority. Mankiller’s political thought was rooted in citizenship: she saw tribal citizens as full people deserving all the rights and services of modern society, administered by their own leaders. In essence, she turned Native political ideals into day-to-day governance and development.

Deb Haaland and Contemporary Sovereignty

Until early 2025, Deb Haaland stood not only as a historic figure—the first Native American to serve in a U.S. Cabinet—but as a living bridge between Indigenous traditions of governance and the machinery of federal power. A Laguna Pueblo woman and former Representative, she held the post of Secretary of the Interior in the Biden administration, leading a department long implicated in the dispossession of Native nations. Her appointment was not merely symbolic. It marked a moment of return—of Indigenous political philosophies, long excluded, reentering the heart of federal policymaking.

Haaland’s tenure was shaped by the principle of co-stewardship, a concept grounded in Indigenous ethics of reciprocity, shared responsibility, and ecological balance. At the 2024 White House Tribal Nations Summit, she emphasized that managing federal lands in partnership with tribes was essential “for the health of our ecosystems and the durability of Tribal sovereignty.” This framing—intertwining environmental sustainability with political autonomy—reflected a deeper shift: a move away from control and toward collaboration, from governance as domination to governance as care.

Under her leadership, the Department of the Interior signed hundreds of co-stewardship agreements, formally recognizing tribal authority in the management of national parks, monuments, and ancestral lands. These actions echoed longstanding Indigenous traditions of land guardianship, while asserting contemporary jurisdiction. In restoring monument designations like Bears Ears—originally made without tribal consent—and affirming tribal voices not as stakeholders but as governments, Haaland worked to reverse a longstanding pattern of paternalistic oversight.

Crucially, she did not present these changes as policy favors, but as legal and moral obligations grounded in treaty law. Her public statements routinely invoked the language of nation-to-nation relationships, challenging the legacy of broken agreements and federal neglect. In doing so, she embodied what many Indigenous scholars call “two-eyed seeing”: the ability to operate within the institutions of settler governance while advancing Native frameworks of responsibility, sovereignty, and time.

Her time in office was not without tension. Some Native activists and tribal leaders argued that co-management, though a step forward, fell short of genuine self-governance. Others called for the full return of stolen lands, or for halting environmentally destructive projects on sacred sites. Haaland navigated these pressures carefully, aware that representation alone could not resolve centuries of structural injustice. Her leadership offered real progress, but also exposed the limits of reform within the confines of federal power.

Still, her tenure marked a turning point. Haaland showed that Native political thought need not remain confined to activism or historical memory—it could govern, legislate, and reshape the architecture of democracy itself. In asserting that “tribes were born sovereign,” she did more than reclaim space; she expanded the meaning of American federalism to include the oldest governments on this continent.

Her legacy raises a deeper question that reverberates through every generation of Native leadership: what does it mean to govern on Indigenous terms, within or alongside the structures of the United States? From Tecumseh’s confederacy to Mankiller’s local pragmatism, from spiritual resistance to legal advocacy, Native political strategies have evolved—but their core principles remain remarkably consistent. To understand the coherence and depth of this tradition, we must now step back from individual lives and examine the enduring themes that unite them: sovereignty, stewardship, and identity.

Recurring Themes: Sovereignty, Stewardship, and Identity

Throughout this journey – from Tecumseh to Haaland – certain themes repeat. Sovereignty is foremost: Native leaders have consistently asserted that their nations have an intrinsic right to self-rule. For Tecumseh and Sitting Bull, that meant outright refusing to accept U.S. authority over their lands. For Chief Joseph, it meant demanding equal rights under U.S. laws. For Deloria and Mankiller, it meant renegotiating the terms of the U.S.-tribal relationship to ensure real self-governance. For Haaland, it means reaffirming that legal doctrine. In each era, the assertion is the same: tribal governments are not mere municipalities but distinct political entities. As Deloria put it, tribes are “sovereign nations protected by federal Indian law”. Even when circumstances forced adaptation, the goal has been sovereignty of some form.

Closely tied is stewardship of the land. From Tecumseh’s invocation that the Great Spirit placed all tribes on the land to nurture it, to Sitting Bull’s imagery of Mother Earth, to Haaland’s co-stewardship initiatives, Indigenous thought has emphasized reciprocity with nature. Land is not commodity but kin, a sacred trust. This shapes policy: Tecumseh said the earth was “the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it”. Joseph echoed that by calling the earth the mother of all and demanding equal rights on it. In practice, tribal governance has often focused on environmental protection and sustainable use – for example, Mankiller opposed nuclear waste dumps, and many tribes use their sovereignty to conserve forests and waters. This notion of stewardship enriches American debates today on conservation and climate.

Another theme is federalism and nation-to-nation relations. Native political thought often assumes a multilevel system: each tribe is a nation, coexisting with states and the federal government. The Marshall Trilogy of Supreme Court cases (Johnson v. M’Intosh, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, Worcester v. Georgia) established federal-tribal treaties as supreme law, even as later policies undercut them. However, Native leaders have continually interpreted these laws in ways that affirm sovereignty. Tecumseh argued that U.S. treaties must be unanimous; Deloria insisted that the U.S. must honor its own treaty obligations; Mankiller and Haaland operate within legal frameworks to reclaim authority. The persistent demand is: a federal system that truly recognizes tribes as distinct governments, not just sub-jurisdictions.

Closely related is the tension between resistance and collaboration. Some leaders, like Tecumseh and Sitting Bull, initially took up arms. Others, like Joseph and later Deloria, sought change through advocacy and courts. Wilma Mankiller worked inside the system once the tools of self-governance were offered, while still pushing back on unjust policies. Tribal history shows both paths: occasionally war or protest, and often negotiation or statecraft. Native political thought has held that collaboration with U.S. authorities can be legitimate – but only on the basis of sovereignty and equality, not paternalism. That is why Deloria could be both sharply critical (sometimes in humor or satire) and also a negotiator in Congress. He and others saw no contradiction in being activists and nation-builders: the two were parts of the same sovereignty goal.

Finally, there is the ongoing question of identity vs. assimilation. Native thought often resists the idea that Indigenous people must become “just like Americans” to succeed. Sitting Bull’s eagle-and-crow quote and Joseph’s brotherhood plea alike affirm Native identity as not only legitimate but equal. Yet others have embraced a dual identity: for example, Vin Deloria sometimes called himself an “Indian nationalist,” rejecting the “American Indian” label in favor of simply “Indian” as a national term. In the post-1960s era, many Natives fought for cultural revival (language, ceremonies) alongside economic and political integration. Politicians like Haaland navigate this tension directly: she is both a U.S. official and a member of a Pueblo tribe, asserting that her Indigenous perspective strengthens American politics. Throughout, the message is that one can be both fully Native and fully engaged in modern governance. The traditional ways and the American way need not be enemies, once the playing field is level.

Conclusion: Native Thought and the Crisis of American Democracy

Native political thought has never been an echo of American ideals—it has been a tradition of its own, shaped by generations of governance, resistance, and renewal. Long before the rise of Washington, Native nations governed themselves with complex systems rooted in consensus, accountability, and stewardship. And long after the treaties were broken, these nations continued to think, adapt, and act—on their own terms.

Today, as the United States confronts deep political polarization, ecological degradation, and a growing loss of public trust, Native thought offers something more than inspiration. It offers correction. For over two centuries, Indigenous leaders have articulated visions of power-sharing, land responsibility, and plural sovereignty that challenge the very foundations of the American state. Tecumseh’s insistence on collective consent, Chief Joseph’s call for equal justice, Deloria’s legal nationalism, Mankiller’s pragmatic sovereignty, and Haaland’s co-stewardship reforms—these are not episodes in the margin. They are blueprints.

But this tradition is not valuable because it can help America in a time of crisis. It is valuable because it has endured despite America’s crisis. Despite forced removals, broken treaties, systemic erasure, and legal betrayal, Native nations have persisted in asserting their sovereignty, renewing their cultures, and building futures rooted in self-determination. This is not a legacy of victimhood. It is a living history of resistance and vision.

What American democracy lacks today is not just decorum or unity. It lacks rootedness. It lacks an ethic of place, of consent, and of interdependence. Native political traditions are not just critiques—they are practices. They embody a different relationship to the land, to authority, to community. And they have been here all along.

If this nation wishes to rediscover the meaning of democracy—not as procedure, but as dignity—it must begin by listening. Not symbolically. Not occasionally. But systematically. It must listen to the Native voices who, generation after generation, have governed, protested, negotiated, and dreamed. Not for inclusion. Not for favor. But for recognition as equal nations.

The trail of resistance is not a tale of the past. It is a present reality and a future horizon. And if American democracy is to be reborn, it will not be by returning to its origins—but by finally honoring the governments and philosophies that were here first.

Welcome to the conversation.

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