ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the conceptual frameworks of European and indigenous sovereignty and examines how the federal government worked to Europeanize indigenous sovereignty and then attacked that exclusive sovereignty, eroding it to various degrees. Sovereignty, in the American Indian conceptual framework, means the same thing as it does in the European conceptual framework: there is an ultimate authority. Territory is central to both American Indian and European conceptual frameworks of sovereignty. Europeans saw each sovereign state recognized through the Peace as “sovereign within its own territory, equal to one another, and free from any external earthly authority". The federal government named the reservations in the late 1800s, the reservation name often identifies the people of those reservations. The passage of the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934 signaled a decade of federal Indian policy that focused on strengthening tribal sovereignty and self-government. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
