Rethinking American Indian and Non‐Indian Relations in the United States and Exploring Tribal Sovereignty: Perspectives from Indian Country and from Inside the Bureau of Indian Affairs

Abstract

AbstractThis article uses materials from field research conducted at the level of tribal homelands and at the federal level of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to rethink and reconceptualize Indian–non‐Indian relations and federal–Indian relations in the United States. I document the ways Chickasaw and Choctaw tribal officials are moving beyond the “deadliest enemies” model of Indian–non‐Indian relations in tribal homelands in their pursuit of strategies that expand the role of tribal governments, mobilize support from local non‐Indians for American Indian tribal empowerment and resurgence, and institutionalize a reordered regional political hierarchy. Cultural constructions of tribal sovereignty undergird these strategies and the transformations that are unfolding in the territories of the American Indian tribe in which I am enrolled and its neighbor tribe. Turning to a second site of participant‐observation field research, I document the ways a different but related construction of tribal sovereignty drives the work of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, an agency whose workforce is more than 95 percent American Indian. Federal–Indian relations are shown to take shape through systematic responses to bureaucratic imperatives, the circulation of legal and popular constructions of Indian identity, and the resistance to segregation of the categories of “federal” and “Indian” in federal–Indian affairs.