Sovereignty

Sovereignty is the right of people to govern themselves.  European settlement raised this issue in an acute form for the Wabanaki People.  They sought to retain their sovereignty in the face of European expansion.  The claim to be sovereign peoples is still made today by the Wabanaki People.  There is a belief that even if the exercise of sovereignty is denied, the right to self-government and self-determination cannot be destroyed. 
 
Sovereignty presumes an accepted definition of who "the people" are.   Definitions of who does and does not belong can change over time.  Forms of government and relations with outsiders also can change.  The principle of sovereignty permits cooperation with others, as in trade or war.  It also permits dependence on others, provided that this has been freely chosen and can be ended by choice.  What cannot be altered is the right of a sovereign people to determine their own fate.

Treaties signed by Wabanaki People and the federal government during the 1700s and 1800s implied that the United States recognized Indians as sovereign.  This implication changed as the result of a Supreme Court decision written in 1831 in which Chief Justice John Marshall qualified Indian sovereignty in the United States:

He observed that Indians lived in "distinct political communities, having territorial boundaries, within  which their authority is exclusive."  However, he would not grant that they were sovereign foreign nations.  He called them "domestic dependent nations" and declared that "they occupy a territory to which we assert a title independent of their will."

He held that Native American tribes retain all of their sovereign powers except those specifically taken from them by Congress.  He said that actions taken by Congress to limit tribal rights of self-government must be clearly stated, with any doubts resolved in the Indians' favor.  This recognition of the continuation of inherent sovereignty in Indian Tribes is a critical feature of federal Indian law today.

Many Native People assert they retain as much right to govern themselves today as they had before the Europeans set foot in the Americas.