De la couronne de Tannassy à l’État de Sequoyah : une histoire de la souveraineté cherokee

Abstract

From Worcester v. Georgia (1832) to McGirt v. Oklahoma (2020), the Supreme Court recurrently reaffirmed Native American sovereignty. However, because the sovereignty preserved by the Supreme Court emanates from the treaties signed with the European and Euro-American colonizers, it can be said to be a conceded form of sovereignty. Another form of sovereignty can be identified as « indigenous, » for at least two reasons. First, it comes from and is exerted upon a specific territory with which a society maintains a specific cultural, spiritual, economic and political relationship. Besides, it existed before colonization. Moreover, sovereignty also implies the power to decide what one’s life and one’s discourse should be, which allows for a conception of self-determination as the power to define oneself. Native American scholars refer to « intellectual sovereignty. » The Cherokees can be taken as a case study to illustrate these different conceptions of sovereignty, from Cherokee indigenous sovereignty, allegedly represented by the Crown of Tannassy, to the failed attempt to create the State of Sequoyah, at the beginning of the twentieth century.