Indigenous Nationhood Claims and Contemporary Federalism in Canada and the United States

Vibrant indigenous communities have not only survived in both the United States and Canada but have recently been advancing a variety of renewed political claims. Central among them are claims to nationhood status and treatment as sovereign governments rather than as racial or ethnic minority groups. While initially following parallel trajectories, these respective efforts have produced surprising and divergent results to date. Although the acceptance of robust indigenous self-government is much more a feature of Canadian public discourse, and robust aboriginal self-government has been affirmed in a few unique but high-profile cases, federally-recognised tribal governments in the United States in general exercise more substantive governmental powers. This article addresses this puzzle and attempts to explain the observed respective changes in terms of both the political status of indigenous groups and federalist political structures. Utilising a comparative approach closely examining the two cases regarding a number of key factors, the analysis presented here identifies the source of the divergence in “Policy feedback” from three historical differences between the two post-colonial nations. Prior actions regarding recognition of inherent indigenous sovereignty, the forced breakup of tribal lands, and ties to the British Crown shaped the political channels through which tribal nationhood claims were promoted in the present. Contingently rather than deterministically, these political channels led to the distinctive outcomes in each nation.