Revitalizing Tribal Sovereignty: Examining Native Nation Building in North America as a Semi-Secular Revitalization Movement

Abstract

Throughout Indian Country, the native nation building process has been a driving force in innovation, economic development, and the reclamation and strengthening of tribal sovereignty. This dissertation considers this process an example of Anthony F.C. Wallace’s concept of revitalization movements and demonstrates that the nation building process and applications by individual native nations constitute a semi-secular revitalization movement, specifically within the concepts of mazeway reformation. This paper pursues this idea through a close analysis of the nation building process in three specific case studies: the Cherokee Nation during the Early Republic Period of U.S. history and both the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and the Citizen Potawatomi Nation in the later part of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Wallace’s model requires some slight modifications to fit the unique characteristics of nation building in Indian Country, but with such modifications it is a suitable application and can help to illuminate new aspects of the complexity of these unique cases, ultimately becoming applicable to other native nations undertaking the nation building process.