ABSTRACT
For over 200 years governments in North America have enforced policies aimed at assimilating and politically dominating Indigenous North American peoples. This chapter discusses several of the political tools used throughout history by colonial powers in North America as a means of highlighting the role that language must play in maintaining Indigenous peoples’ distinct cultural identity against a long and continuing history of political subjugation. After the United States was born as a nation, America’s leadership began to recognize the sovereignty and rights of various nations of Indigenous peoples through treaties. This early recognition, however, was soon followed by the United States government exercising its own brand of colonial control. In 1789, under Section 8 of the Constitution, the newly formed government claimed itself to possess certain powers; specifically, its ability ‘to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes’.
