The White Earth Nation: Ratification of a Native Democratic Constitution

1. Sovereignty, Democracy, Constitution: An Introduction

1 1 David E. Wilkins Sovereignty, Democracy, Constitution an introduction Sovereignty. Democracy. Constitution. These are mere words. But words, and the often variable meaning or meanings assigned to them by human beings, matter. Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes put it succinctly in Towne v. Eisner when he said, “A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used.” However, as the “skins of living thoughts,” words, especially those with the convoluted history and confused contemporary status of concepts like sovereignty, democracy, and constitution, are intimately linked to the ideas of national identity, political authority (whether absolute or constrained, papal or secular), international law and diplomacy, and intergovernmental relations . Such concepts, I believe, are more useful when they have a measure of clarity. As Karl Deutsch, a political scientist, once observed, “A word is only a kind of noise unless we sooner or later use it to lead to a procedure that will tell us whether or not a certain event or fact belongs under the word. The meaning of a word is defined by its limits, by knowing what does not belong 2 Wilkins under it as clearly as what does. Any word that could include everything and anything has no place in science.” Unfortunately, and despite their centrality to politics, political science, law, American Indian studies, and other fields, the concepts of sovereignty, democracy, and constitution, along with the kindred terms nation and state, suffer from what Walker Connor in his study, Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding, called a “terminological disease.” This is because each of these concepts is “shrouded in ambiguity” due to imprecise, inconsistent, and sometimes completely erroneous usage. A veritable “linguistic jungle” encircles each of these important concepts. As one example, let us look at the concept of sovereignty, arguably one of the most, if not the most, critical concepts in indigenous studies and the resurgence of indigenous nationalism. Does sovereignty mean absolute power, supreme legal authority, or merely legal competence? Does it mean popular will, is it ecclesiastically derived, and does it include both external and internal dimensions? Similarly, does indigenous sovereignty mean self-governance, domestic dependency, economic vitality, cultural knowledge and integrity, organic connections to the land, something else, or all of the above? A quick glance at the judicial, policy, and intellectual literature finds, at a minimum, the following variants of indigenous sovereignty : savage sovereignty, quasi-sovereignty, primeval sovereignty, residual sovereignty, semi-sovereignty, inherent sovereignty, delegated sovereignty, internal and/or external sovereignty, spiritual sovereignty, mature sovereignty, cultural sovereignty, economic sovereignty, rhetorical sovereignty, ancient sovereignty, artistic sovereignty, and even food sovereignty, among others. Such a plethora of terms makes it difficult to gain any clear and sensible understanding of the actual status of indigenous nations; their inherent authority in internal and external powers; or their actual political relations with other Native nations, states, the United States, or international actors. Sovereignty, Democracy, Constitution 3 Despite this terminological anarchy, the terms sovereignty and Native sovereignty and the related concepts of indigenous democracy and Native constitutionalism are particularly vital concepts within and outside indigenous communities, as the recent social, cultural, and political efforts of the White Earth Nation attest. The reasons will be expounded upon below and in the chapters that ensue. Early Indigenous Political and Kinship History Human societies, regardless of their location on the planet, have over time arrived at a remarkably diverse and generally useful set of informal and formal institutional arrangements in a constant effort to maintain relatively stable social, environmental , and cultural existences. Indigenous peoples in North America were, of course, no exception, and for untold millennia they used a plethora of effective social, political, and economic arrangements that enabled them to coexist within the sacred landscapes and waterways they depended on for their identity, sustenance, and subsistence. While European notions of sovereign authority were originally said to be legitimated by the Christian God and were later supported by the Roman Catholic Church, over time political theorists, beginning with Thomas Hobbes, sought and achieved a vitally important separation between the state, God, and the church; in the process, they devised a hypothetical social contract in which fear-driven individuals living lives considered to be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” joined forces for the common purpose of safety and security and...