Native Diasporas: Indigenous Identities and Settler Colonialism in the Americas

14. Asserting a Global Indigenous Identity

Chapter 14 Asserting a Global Indigenous Identity Native Activism Before and After the Cold War Daniel M. Cobb The United States operates on incredibly stupid premises. vine deloria jr., Custer Died for Your Sins The assertion of a global indigenous identity stands among the most potentially transformative aspects of the struggle for tribal sovereignty during the Cold War era (1945–1991). Advocates achieved this, in part, by adopting a language of nationalism, anticolonialism, and decolonization. This critically important rhetorical stance connected the past experiences, present concerns, and future aspirations of American Indians to those of other indigenous peoples in the Western Hemisphere and beyond. It also served as an impetus for locating Native issues in the context of international laws governing human rights, a “postcolonial vision” that Lumbee legal scholar Robert A. Williams Jr. calls “the neglected Fifth Element of the Marshall Model of Indian Rights.”1 Twenty-first-century perspectives on Native politics attest to the decisiveness of the shift. Mainstream newspapers, radio broadcasts, and websites—from Indian Country Today and News from Indian Country to Native America Calling and indianz.com—regularly address global indigenous issues. The National Congress of American Indians (ncai) and the Assembly of First Nations, national advocacy organizations 444 cobb in the United States and Canada, respectively, have coordinated their efforts since 2001 in keeping with the “Declaration of Kinship and Cooperation among the Indigenous Peoples and Nations of North America.” The idea of tribal governments having a presence in United Nations forums strikes us as commonplace rather than controversial . After decades of effort, the un General Assembly’s endorsement of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples no longer represents an insurmountable obstacle but a battle won.2 But how much do we really know about the antecedents to these accomplishments? How well do we understand the history that makes the assertion of an international identity a reassertion, the connection to other indigenous peoples a reconnection, and the locating of issues in a global context a relocating? Political scientist Benedict Anderson’s work on nation-states as “imagined communities” allows us to see the articulation of Native and global indigenous rights movements as a reimagining as well. Native nations, no less than those of Europe, Africa , Asia, or the Western Hemisphere, represent imagined political communities. The contemporary individuals, governments, and organizations involved in the tribal sovereignty movement represent not “a new” but “the next” generation. They continue a centurieslong tradition of constructing and reconstructing the boundaries of nationhood, of defining and redefining its meaning. Some have done so consciously and others have not.3 This chapter acknowledges the deep history of thinking globally about the rights of indigenous peoples and offers a detailed look at how that process evolved over the course of the twentieth century. A concluding section asks why the legacy of this important political tradition remains unfixed and uncertain, even as it continues into the twenty-first century. The central characters include individuals associated with the Society of American Indians (sai), Inter-American Indian Institute, National Congress of American Indians (ncai), Association on American Indian Affairs (aaia), National Indian Youth Council, International Indian Treaty Council (iitc), and Working Group on Indigenous Populations. Does it make sense to place these historical figures and the larger political tradition to which they contributed global indigenous identity 445 in a diasporic context? Dakota intellectual Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa ) answered that question when, at the beginning of the twentieth century, he described himself as a “stranger in a strange country.”4 In a physical sense, many of the Native individuals featured in this chapter lived in diaspora—that is, they resided in communities far removed from the ancestral homelands of their people. Others stayed but found the world around them made strange by diaspora—exiled without ever leaving. Both circumstances emerged from the fact that in the present-day United States, colonists arrived intent on becoming the new Natives.5 Antecedents American Indians did not need the presence of Europeans to engage in international politics. Much has been written about whether concepts such as “nation” and “sovereignty,” given their European derivation , adequately describe indigenous self-conceptions at the time of contact. Whatever one concludes, it does not change the fact that Native communities had clear senses of community, belonging, governance , law, authority, exchange, and place for themselves and in contradistinction to neighbors both near and far. From this essential de...